I met Jake (not his real name) when we both attended a small private college. Our first conversation was about our shared love for Star Trek: The Next Generation. In fact, we even shared the same favorite character-Data. After his freshman (my sophomore) year he dropped out due to financial issues. I thought we were over before we’d even begun, but he kept in touch with me. He planned to attend his state university and enroll in Air Force ROTC. I was ecstatic. I’d always had a thing for men in uniform and now I had one!

Though we lived far away, Jake and I kept up a good relationship for a year. We traded off visiting each other’s places and spoke via phone and text message regularly. He talked about a future together and made it clear to me (and everyone else) that this was his intention. Again, I was ecstatic. Most girls can’t find a man who wants to commit and mine was not only willing to commit but not afraid to let others know? I thought for sure it was just a matter of time until I got the rock.

Then he lost his ROTC scholarship. We were both devastated. Jake began to pull away from me. He was always the outgoing, talkative one and I was the quieter one. But now we’d talk on the phone for half an hour and he would say “uh-huh” to everything I said. I’d ask him what was going on and he’d heave a long sigh and respond, “I dunno…not much.” I told myself that any ill feelings were just because I’d lost my man in uniform and that was selfish; I needed to forget about it. I reminded myself that I loved Jake, not the uniform.

Except it became harder and harder to love him. The next time I visited Jake it was obvious that he’d completely let himself go. He’d stopped working out and grown a goatee that made him look like Billy the innkeeper in Stardust. This disgusted me, but he was kind and loving to me throughout my visit. Once again I told myself that was the important thing. I would just have to get past his rapidly deteriorating appearance.

When I left, Jake didn’t call me to ensure I was safe. In fact, he didn’t call me at all. I sent two texts asking him to call and he never did. Finally I phoned him and felt like a telemarketer. He couldn’t get me off the phone fast enough. A few days later I found out why.

I received a letter postmarked two days after I had left. Jake told me he had not been in love with me for the last several months, and he didn’t want to be my boyfriend anymore.  However, he still wanted us to see each other periodically and keep in touch. He wanted us to “just be the best of friends.” Jake told me how awesome I was, and how many great memories he shared with me, but it was just time for our relationship to end.

I spent two days a heartbroken, destroyed mess. All the dreams I’d had for us were gone. I felt cheated and betrayed. Jake had spent the last six months lying to me and stringing me along, and he’d let me spend an ungodly amount of money on a plane ticket when he had every intention of dumping me. I couldn’t believe I’d ever wanted to get involved with him in the first place. How could I not have seen what a coward and a loser he was?

I have no intention of ever speaking to Jake again. But today I am grateful for him. I’m grateful that he dropped me before we got married. If he did this now, I’m quite sure he would have done so after we said the vows and exchanged the rings. He showed me his true colors and made me realize that I can do so much better than him. And while I may have cried for a couple of days, he’ll be crying for the rest of his life. Because he’s now joined The Club. The club of men who watch Star Trek all by themselves because they didn’t marry Katie Tallaksen.

I always liked Marines better, anyway.

He cried all the time when we started dating. I’d go to the store for a minute, only to find him crying when I returned:

I am not an understanding person.   THEY were together for nearly 8 years!  Should we break up? No, he’s in love with me, not her. It’s just going to take him a little while longer to get over HER.

He began to lay down the law:

He is in charge.  We go to bed when he is ready for bed—5AM.  If I want a warm blanket, I can buy it myself.  If I want a bed large enough for 2 people, I can get it myself.  He can’t sleep at my house because he has to play his guitar all night.  We eat what I put in his fridge, or we eat eggs.  We go where he wants when he wants and I better be on time.  If I don’t like it, we can go out separately.  THEY used to go out separately.

He couldn’t believe he was attracted to me. He told me this all the time.

He usually likes short brunette girls, like HER.  She is so sexy.  He’s never been attracted to cheesy blondes with blue eyes.  I am blonde with blue eyes.  So many girls love him!  They are all over him!  He is the man!

He was so mad that I put pictures of us on Facebook, even though he had asked me to join the site:

SHE saw them!  SHE de-friended him!  I am so insensitive.  He de-friended me.

How dare I complain? If I don’t like it I can leave.

I leave.  He begs me to come back.  He throws me out.  He begs me to come back.  He throws me out.  He begs me to come back.  He throws me out.  He begs.  We break up.

He tried to date HER again, but he wouldn’t stop calling me.

I see them at my graduation.  SHE is not the short, dark-haired woman I imagined.  SHE is not Selma Hayek or Eva Longoria Parker.  She is chunky and frumpy.  She is from New Jersey.  He can’t seal the deal with her.  He’s only attracted to me.  But I’m not good enough to marry because I want children.  We are 30.  SHE has her priorities in order.  SHE tells him that she doesn’t want kids anytime soon.   SHE wants what he wants.  SHE won’t ever ask for a thing.  SHE will never complain.  SHE’s perfect for him.

I was in Washington DC for a weekend, and called up an old college friend to see if we could catch up. He works downtown and I was downtown sight-seeing, so he told me to go to this random book store in the middle of a huge, crowded square and he would find me. Sketchy. So I had to wait in this bookstore for 30 minutes for him to come find me after he got off work.

After he finally found me, there was an awkward, “I tried to go in for the hug, he turned it into a high-five.” Then, we took a cab to his apartment just outside downtown. Side note: apartment=disgusting. Nasty furniture, dirty dishes in the sink and all over the house, shit everywhere, bathroom was disgusting, and I’m cringing at the thought of it right now. Looks like its never been cleaned - ever. After he changed his clothes and put his work stuff away, he said we would go out to dinner. He took me to Georgetown, a fancier part of DC, with nice restaurants, upscale shops, etc. So I thought, hmmm nice dinner, could be fun. No. he takes me to freaking Chipotle. Because he doesn’t want to wait 15 minutes for a table.

So we go through the line, pick out our food, “build our burrito” if you will, get up to the cash register. And right as we get up to the register, he happens to see someone he knows across the restaurant (perfectly timed, I might add) and goes over to say hello. I end up paying for the meal! So I get our food and take it to a table, and then he sits down and starts eating, no thank you or anything.

After dinner, I asked if we could walk around the area, look at the shops and stuff. The whole time we were walking, he would always walk ahead of me, not beside me. And I think it was around the time of prom, so there were all these girls in fancy dresses, guys in tuxedos, and limos everywhere, so I was people watching a little. We were waiting at a corner to cross the street, and I guess the pedestrian light turns green and he starts walking. I must have been people watching all the prom kids, not paying attention. He starts whistling and snapping his fingers at me, telling me to come, like a dog!! I say back to him, “excuse me, I’m not your dog” and he just laughs and keeps walking.

We finish walking around, and go back to his apartment. When we get there, he asks if I want a drink. I ask what he has, and he says Jack Daniels and a bottle of wine. But then he adds: “I don’t know how old the wine is.” So he does a taste test, pours some in a glass, takes a sip and says, “Yeah, it’s pretty good.” I look down at his glass, and floating in the wine he just poured were hundreds, I kid you not, HUNDREDS of fruit flies! I look at him and say, “Did you just drink that!?!” and he looks at the glass, and runs to the kitchen and starts washing his mouth out and spitting and everything. I start laughing, naturally, and he gets angry. He says if I ever speak of this, he will punch me in the face. Sadly enough, he wasn’t kidding.

So I have to settle with a jack and coke, no ice, because it’s a guys house and guys aren’t organized enough to have ice in the freezer. We are sitting on his couch drinking and he is channel surfing. It was a Friday night, there were several movies on TV, but no. I have no say in what we watch. He makes me watch UFC fighting. ok, I totally respect UFC fighters, good for them, with their ability to kick other peoples asses. But no thanks. Don’t want to watch you.

Okay, I know you are probably thinking, this is ridiculously long, but just wait… it gets better.

So we are watching the UFC fighting, then he jumps up and says, “Wait, I have to show you something!” he starts rearranging his bedroom furniture and then goes to his closet and pulls out this big square suitcase with a cord attached. He plugs the cord into this wall and this loud obnoxious motor noise starts coming from the suitcase. The suitcase starts to unfold and expand. All this different parts keep coming out and getting bigger. IT’S AN INFLATABLE MATTRESS!! I’m sitting there speechless. And he turns to me and says, “What do you think? My mom got it for me from sky mall!”

Then he comes over to the couch, picks me up and throws (literally throws) me on that inflatable crap and starts to try to make out/hump my leg. We are both fully clothed, I wasn’t drunk at all, and he is sitting there humping my leg. Really, really? Then he turns to me and says “do you have a condom?”

At that point, I stand up, get my things, and leave. Standing outside, waiting for a cab to come, and a $78 cab ride later, I make it back to my hotel. Needless to say, I haven’t spoken to him since.

I hate a woman I’ve never met. Her name is Jordana and she has no idea I exist. In fact until about 13 months ago I didn’t even know who she was either. But now she is the reason I wonder if there are any good men out there; the reason I shutter when someone mentions New England or the Navy or the Boston Red Sox (like I needed another reason to hate them).

Early last year after a 2 year dating and sex drought I decided it was high time to get up and meet someone new. After my lifelong sweetheart and I broke things off 3 years ago I hadn’t had much interest in dating. One night while sitting alone in my cold apartment I decided I wouldn’t spend anymore Friday nights alone with Will and Grace reruns and a large pizza. So I joined a dating site and soon began meeting people. After two miserable encounters I was about to give up. And then there was a message from a cute sailor who on paper seemed quite perfect. After a few emails and texts we agreed on a first date. And what a first date it was. He was Italian, funny, a great butt and he adored me. He brought me a dozen roses and opened doors for me. When he kissed me it was like I’d never been kissed before. Suddenly I felt like I was back in the saddle again, ready to go.

Things were going well until about a month into the relationship. I logged onto facebook one day and noticed someone named Jordana was leaving him gifts and messages. She sent him a virtual strip tease. Who was this woman moving in on my man? His ex from Maine, whom he’d left behind after comng home to Cincinnati when his stint with the Navy was over. She was ten years his senior, thinner than me with giant breasts and big curly black hair. She was covered in tattoos and had piercings and even owned her own hair salon. She posted pictures of herself in her Red Sox jersey with giant hoop earrings. Being a diehard Yankees fan I didn’t need any more reasons to hate this woman. Yet somehow I felt inadaquate and frumpy compared to this barfly mess. I soon confronted him in which he confessed that he still loved her. We agreed to take life one day at a time and just enjoy each others company. Everything was going smoothly until 2 weeks later…

On a Monday morning around 6 a.m. I recieved a text message. The contents of this said text message was so vile and so heartbreaking I ran to the bathroom and threw up. It simply said ‘You’re going to hate me for what I’m about to tell you. Jordana is coming to visit me for 5 days’ They would be shacking up in a hotel together while she was here. He said he needed to do this and asked if I would wait for him until she was gone. He thought that he’d have a better idea of what he wanted once he spent some time with her. I went nuts. I threatened to message her on facebook and tell her who I was. To her, he was still single, pining over her monster boobs and barhair while he was really with me. She didn’t know I existed. After a long week of fighting he text me the night before she was to arrive and said she wasn’t coming. Upset that he wouldn’t take time off work to hang out with her, she decided not to come. She deleted him from facebook and myspace, even out of her phone. Everyting seemed perfect.

The next weekend we had a great night out with my friends. Driving home from a party I looked at him snoozing in the passenger seat next to me and thought ‘this is totally worth; everything is going to be all right’.And it was. Until the following Saturday. He text me and said he’d been doing a lot of thinking lately and decided he never wanted to see me again. He didn’t have a reason. He just needed space. I tried and tried to get a reason out of him but he never caved. Even after a face to face meeting to redeem the Reds tickets I’d bought him he wouldn’t give me a reason. He told me I was beautiful and drove away. The moral of the story is that I should’ve gotten out while I was ahead. I had the upper hand and instead I came out looking like a crazy heartbroken mess. I let my guard down and let a man who had no remorse for his infidelity get the best of me. For some reason I hate her more than him. Maybe it’s easier; I didn’t know her. Who knows. But what I do know is that never again will I let someone come in and crap all over my life. And every woman should follow suit. If theres another woman, you’re not special. If there’s an ex still in the picture there’s a chance he will never give you his full attention. Or his heart.

The bathroom floor is covered with hair. With each stroke I see the hair droppings fall to the tile. How did I get here? I think of guys from my past that didn’t work out: gay guys, lazy guys, cheaters, and drug addicts. I believed by the time I was 30 that I’d meet that perfect guy, the one that would sweep me off my feet, but in a year I will turn that age and there I was in the bathroom of my boyfriend, Tim’s, townhouse, shaving his back.

It was an odd request, sitting here on his couch watching television, having a few drinks. It was probably the last thing I expected to come out of Tim’s mouth in fact; who asks their girlfriend to shave them anyway?! Sure, we cared about each other, but was this really my responsibility? I could see watering his plants or feeding the fish while he was out of town or something, but never expected this favor to be asked of me. Strangely enough, I agreed to his request and there we were in his bathroom, shaving his overgrown, tangled mess of his thick, coarse, black back hair.

Now I must say I am not one to be tolerant of guys and their flaws. Being a lot like the female version of Seinfeld, I can always find something that is not quite right with guys I date; whether it be their abnormal hairy moles, flabby bellies, or slight lisps, that’s the end of it for me. For some reason, though, this shaving adventure was one I agreed to and thought I could handle. For a second I was convinced that this meant he was definitely “the one”. I thought for this very brief, fleeting moment that I had been wasting my time all these years with all the other smooth, hairless backed guys of the world only to realize that hairy beast was the guy for me. It turns out you never look at someone the same after you shave their backs. Believe me, I am not one at all to give advice on guys, but can give advice in the area of shaving your boyfriend’s back (or anyone’s back for that matter): just say no.

We had been dating long distance for two and a half years and in that time I had pretty much pathetically tailored my life around our relationship. I flew to visit him every other week. He didn’t like to visit me because “there was nothing to do there.” I watched the TV shows and read the websites he liked so we could talk about them on the phone and over e-mail but when I would suggest he try something I liked he would scoff at it and tell me why the things I enjoyed were stupid. He gave me a subscription to The Economist for my birthday which I read religiously even though it bored me to tears because he’d quiz me on it weekly. Since I was a lawyer and lived in a different state I took the bar exam in his state so I could find work there. A BAR EXAM.

When I passed and was sworn in a couple blocks from where he worked, my parents flew in to support me but he couldn’t take an hour out of his day to make an appearance. He didn’t like kissing so we never kissed, not even during sex. He also had a bad habit of crushing my head every single time he would climax. When I gently mentioned to him that I was starting to worry he might break my neck during sex he got defensive. All of these things should’ve been major red flags but I just kept telling myself “That’s just how he is. He’s special and quirky and I like that. I’m lucky to be with someone who’s so different.” I had myself completely convinced that I was the luckiest girl to be with him and that everyone else could see how “lucky” I was.

A little over two years into it we decided to get engaged and move in together. It was more of a negotiation than a decision but I had completely fooled myself into thinking I wanted it. Shortly after that I was faced with a heartrending decision to have surgery that would ensure I could never have children. We talked it over in depth and decided it would be the best thing and we would work through it when that time came. I felt fortunate to have made the decision with the person I planned to spend the rest of my life with. Fast forward two months after the surgery, we both flew to New York and met there for a four-day vacation where we planned to get engaged (the ring had been purchased two months earlier). I would move in with him the next month. Instead, we met at the airport and went to the hotel where he told me he didn’t love me, had known this for months (well before the surgery) but didn’t have the courage to tell me until then.

He then promptly went back to the airport, flew home, and never spoke to me again.I FINALLY came to my senses the second he dumped me. As the words came out of his mouth and I realized that was it, I felt nothing but a huge sense of relief. No sadness, no anger, no confusion, just absolute utter relief that I didn’t have to be with him anymore. I don’t know why I was hanging on so much or why I felt I was so lucky to be with him. I’m extremely grateful he dumped me because I was so focused on making it work I never stepped back to take a look and realize I didn’t really want it to work.

This is to add some perspective from a male point of view. I was not a big dater leading into my marriage so when I got divorced and explored the world of Internet dating it was an amazing learning experience. I was told by my family to make sure to “stay away from anyone that is needy this time.” That obviously begs the question, What is needy?After a couple of years of sporadic dating, I met a lady that I found interesting and attractive. We dated for six months without any visible problems or differences. We had differences on children and scheduling but I always thought, “That is nothing major. I am sure there are some areas of scheduling that I had become lack on that would be worth correcting.”We even went on a road trip to a family reunion with no problems. At least I did not think so.

Of course, it is not until we broke up that my sisters decided to tell me, “I am glad you did that. She was not right for you.”Anyhow back to the “What were you thinking”. It was after the trip that things began to unravel. Of all things it started with a discussion about religion, which began with asking about The Da Vinci Code. When I was told that she would not read that story or Harry Potter Novels because the church does not recommend them I was taken back. I then questioned how she could support her gay friends and have pre-marital sex, which would be considered higher on the Do Not Do List. That ended the evening poorly but got me thinking about other differences in our beliefs but hey it was only one disagreement; no big deal.

That actually opened the flood gates to continual questioning: If I called to say I was playing mixed doubles tennis and would be over after the match; I would be accussed of wanting to spend time with another woman. - If I was told to “Just come over tonight.” I was suppose to realize that a surprise dinner was being made and I should have arrived earlier. Although I didn’t think it was my fault or something to blow up about, I would send flowers or plan a nice dinner out or buy some special lingerie to apologize. I still kept thinking, “No big deal. I just need to listen better.”The final melt down was a combination of two things, although I think we both knew things were about to end.

The first was when I was told that I wasn’t as romantic as other guys (ex-husband, ex-fiance, ex-boyfriend). I was shocked to believe that I was being placed in a category below people that were; physically and mentally abusive, manic depressive, and an alcoholic. The conversation ended with “You just don’t get it.” This seems to be a great female catch all phrase. My sisters like to say that it means, “You just don’t get it. You are suppose to change to meet my desires and needs because I’m not changing.” I did not need any further discussion after that statement. I stood up, put on my shoes and walked out the door.The funny thing is one month later I received a call from this lady to say she had a dream about me and knew that we should remain as friends. So, we have actually remained as loose dining or telephone friends. For the first year or so after we broke up I would be asked, “So, do you get it yet?” I would either make a sexual comment or just say I get we should stay as friends. After a couple of years, I was finally told, “I have to apologize to you because I now realize you “get it more than most guys”". Luckily we both got it that getting out of a “relationship” that has too many differences can be better for both people.

I am embarressed too say I have so many bad boyfriend stories it would take me years to say them all, but one guy definently has to top them all. He actually ended up being my ex husband eventually so guess that proves my stories worth and my idiocy. Our relationship was filled with breakups and makeups and 99% of the time it was because he was bored or something and had cheated on me so he broke up with me. The other 1% was he got me in so much trouble at home I would get grounded and he couldn’t hang out with me so he’d break up with me.

I remember times of him leaving me with no ride(I was in high school and had no car), walking in on him and another girl, forgotten Valentine’s days, waiting weeks without a call, and yet I always felt like in the end he made up for it and we stayed together. After high school and being on and off for years, he asked me to marry him via email, yes you read the right via email, and I said yes. To this day I have no idea why I can only figure I felt the timing must be finally right for us. I seem to have forgotten all the rejections, and of course the bad boyfriend didn’t turn out to be a great husband either.

I would have to say their were two defining moments when I knew without a doubt what a mistake I made (since apparently I failed to catch on to all the indicators when we were dating). The first was in the beginning when we were newlywed and driving to our new state and he got mad and left me in a hotel for a few hours thinking he wasn’t coming back. The other would be when my mother passed away and he said he had a trip to go on and didn’t want to cancel it or take more time off to come home with me for her funeral. All I can say is hindsight is the best thing about growing old. That was the last time I made the mistake of accepting less than I deserve, no matter what my daydreamy mind and loins told me!

So I was in love with an Israeli man (I am catholic) who also professed his undying love for me. This was the “real” thing. I got pregnant. He didn’t want the baby, telling me it was because the timing was bad or we were too young (late 20’s), I don’t remember… At the end of the relationship he tells me the real reason - that I, as non-jew, was not good enough to be mohter to his children. So he decides that I need to terminate the pregnancy. I didn’t want to lose him, so I agreed. He drops me off at the clinic, but doesn’t stay with me through the most tramatic experience of my life. No, he drops me off and heads to the mall to kill time and we arrange for him to return at a set time. He returns 1-1/2 hours later than promised while I sit in the waiting room, stunned and emotionally drained. We get in the car and he tells me he picked up a few nice pairs of shoes for himself… oh, and was it a boy or a girl.

“On the perils of travel”I spend way the hell too much time on the internet. I know this. I am a Computer Guy by trade, the sort where you can hear the capital letters when people say it, and it sounds in unflattering moments like some kind of exotic venereal disease. “Yeah, she gave me a nasty case of Computer Guy. My junk turned green. I just hope it doesn’t fall off.”Spend as much time on the internet as I tend to, you meet people. I admit it, I’ve met my fair share of ladies, both actual ladies and the transcybered, over the internet. Hell, it’s how I met my fiancée. But well before that, I met someone entirely different. For the purposes of this narrative, we shall call her Iris. She was the first internet acquaintance I ever met in person.I am firmly of the belief that there is absolutely nothing that, under the right circumstances, can’t be funny. Sometimes, this makes me kind of a horrible person. Especially considering that the following events took place several years ago when I was just out of my teens, this belief resulted in me cracking a lot of jokes about dead babies and necrophilia–and occasionally both at the same time–amidst the dick jokes and your-mom putdowns that are a staple of nearly everyone’s adolescent humour. I, being the age I was, gleefully mistook my indulgence in off-colour humour and the fact that my age was no longer prefixed with a “1″ as a sign of maturity.

She, being two years my junior, did much the same and was appropriately impressed with me. We fell not into love so much as something very lust-like. While it bore only a passing resemblance to genuine affection, being young and stupid, I figured it would be worth pursuing.To this day, I am still not certain exactly why I decided it might be a good idea to visit her. I’d like to think that young me had slightly more complex motivations than the fact that she was pretty and I was quite certain to get to sleep with her if I made the trip from my humble Canadian prairie home to Seattle to see her. Having recently evolved from a nerdy-looking little slip of a boy into some early-beta version of a guy who had any idea of what to do with himself in a social situation, it’s possible that I simply latched on to the first thing with breasts that would give me the time of day.

An actual relationship was highly unlikely due to logistics alone. Not that we had enough in common outside of the games we both played to form the basis of one. But we talked about it anyway and that seemed to make her happy, and eventually I guess I got pulled in by the shining vision of the impossible too.So it was, too few months later, that I found myself boarding an airplane from my tiny Western-Canadian city to Seattle. My first stop was Vancouver, where I would clear US customs. I had an hour and a half to do so–plenty of time, I figured, and reassured myself while I waited for my luggage at the customs carousel. And waited. And waited. When the bags for a different flight started coming in, I grew concerned, and began to look for the domestic baggage carousel. Which, as my luck would have it, was one floor below me, on the opposite side of the terminal. In my panic, I believe I set a land speed record for a half-kilometer sprint, pausing only twice to get terrifyingly lost, before arriving at the domestic luggage carousel. Only to discover a man waiting for me, to inform me that they had found my bag misplaced there, and had it delivered to where I had just come from. I must have run right by it without even noticing.

A second mad dash later had me standing in front of a particularly humourless customs official, who decided that the combination of my breathlessness, my relative youth to be traveling alone, and the fact that I now had only twenty minutes before my flight was to board were fairly suspicious. I was directed to have my bag and person hand-searched. Just what I needed.So there I was, standing in my underpants with the contents of my suitcase spread liberally out on a table in front of me when they announced my flight was boarding. One customs officer, mercifully, was human enough to put in a call to hold the flight up for me. I was eventually allowed to dress and get on my plane, confident the worst was over.I landed in Seattle, fetched my bag—which was actually in the right place this time—and looked around for the lovely lady I’d come here to meet.

Then I looked some more. Then I looked some more than that. Eventually, I found a pay phone and called her.”Oh yeah,” she said, in a voice tinged with dawning comprehension. “I thought you were coming in later. I’ll be right there.”Half an hour later, a Neanderthal from security demanded to know why I was loitering in the arrivals area. He seemed swayed by my story of waiting on my ride, though when he came back twenty minutes later, he was not quite so content with the same explanation. At last, Iris arrived, another girl in tow. Though upset, and further irked that there wasn’t much in the way of an apology on the way to the car, I was mostly just glad to see her. Once my suitcase was crammed into the trunk, I was relegated by myself to the back seat of the car, while the two of them chatted without particular effort towards my inclusion in the conversation. Eventually I fell asleep.I awoke some time later to the delightful tones of screaming youth. I should backtrack at this point, and mention that Iris hails, ancestrally, from the Philippines. You will be unsurprised, dear reader, to then hear that in a house not much larger than two side-by-side basketball courts, there were never less than about fourteen people at any one time. As a man generally accustomed to both quiet and solitude, as well suffering from crippling shyness amongst large numbers of strangers, I was somewhat less than thrilled by this discovery.After dropping my suitcase off in a room I was informed would be mine, I was taken off to a crummy Chinese restaurant, where I sat quietly for about the next four hours, failing to follow gossip about people I’ve never met. I would occasionally give a half-hearted chuckle when someone made a joke about Canada before forgetting I existed again, perhaps once every half hour or so.

The eventual return to Iris’ house was marked with the discovery that while I was gone, someone had rifled through my suitcase. Missing was about $100 in cash and two condoms. I left money in my suitcase, you see, because when I have money on me, I tend to squander it. It seemed wisest not to bring all my money with me, so I’d still have some later in the week. That worked out really well for me, it seems. Inquiries as to just who the fuck had been rifling through my suitcase were met with a mixture of muttering in an unfamiliar language, and noncommittal shrugs. I did later locate one on the missing condoms. Used. In a wet spot on my bed. I slept on the floor that night, and not, as I had been led to believe I would, anywhere near Iris.The next day or two are worthy of mention only in that they happened, much unlike anything between Iris and I. I never did get my money back, though I did probably discover who’d been using my condoms, when I went to my room to discover my bed rather vigourously occupied. At least, I thought wistfully, someone was using my condoms, even if it wasn’t me. I think I deserve an award for not strangling anyone when I was berated for walking into my own goddamn room without knocking.I spent less time with Iris than I had thought I was going to, as she seemed eager to free herself of my presence on the frequent occasions one of the many loosely related people hanging around offered her something better to do than kick around with me. I spoke at no great length to her on this subject as she was busily leaving to go somewhere I wasn’t welcome.

Her family, she informed me coldly, always came first, even when that meant abandoning the dude who’d just shelled out most of his savings to buy a plane ticket to see her. She forestalled any reply by leaving, and refused to speak on the subject further. I didn’t push it. I would like to tell you, dear reader, that I was simply too much the gentleman to argue a point that seemed to mean something to her; or that I was too much the forward-thinker to get into an argument with the only person familiar to me that I would be near for the next five days. Neither is the case. Rather, my courtesy came straight from my gonads, which in typical male fashion convinced me that there might still be some remote possibility of getting laid, so I’d best not fuck it up.Eventually, Iris decided she’d like to go to an arcade somewhere, so she could play Dance Dance Revolution. However, she was unable to drive, which explained in large part the presence of numerous friends whenever we left the house for any reason. I, being licensed to drive, was an obvious solution to this problem. So, keys to an aunt’s car in hand, she woke me up that morning with a kick to the shins, pitched a slice of toast at me, and informed me I was driving her to an arcade. Knowing, at this point, that anything negative I said about my awakening would never cease to be an issue–and keeping in mind the mandate from my gonads–I mumbled something unintelligible about waking slowly, gathered my things and what I could find of my wits, and off we went.I converted, upon our arrival, the remainder of my money into quarters. A paltry eighty of them lining a pocket, I strode purposefully towards the DDR machines, thinking to get a game or two in with Iris.

Keep in mind the fact that I was, at the time, about as coordinated as you could expect a gangly fifty kilo boy to be when he’d recently grown into a body designed to be about fifteen kilos heavier. So you can imagine how well I didn’t do, especially with no prior experience at the game. Iris didn’t much want to play DDR with me after that. This was alright, as I had no desire to play any more of it myself, so I amused myself with lightgun games ’til I ran out of money. I knew better, at this point, than to expect her to join me.Sated by horrifying (albeit, sadly, digital) violence and having run out of money long before she did, I stood about and watched Iris for a while, lacking anything better to do. I took a manner of satisfaction in seeing some random dude beating her thoroughly about a half dozen times in a row. Eventually, she got bored, and we spent a while chatting with the dude she’d been playing with. He seemed an unremarkable sort, differentiable from the archetypal pop culture drone only by his skill at Dance Dance Revolution and the fact that he drove an admittedly very nice car. Still, at least he was friendly, and got Iris into a more talkative mood than I’d seen her in that week. I played along as best I could with her blathering about this or that pop culture icon, unsurprised when she didn’t extend me the same courtesy when I attempted to steer the conversation towards a subject I knew (or cared) about.Then, a few hours later, the random dude from the arcade arrived at her house. He and Iris promptly vanished. I was somewhat confused; more so a few hours later when next I saw her, him still in tow. I endured an unpleasantly large number of loud noises, coming from the general direction of her room that night.I confronted her the next morning, about just what the fuck had happened to result in several months of awkward adolescent romance culminating in her fucking some random jackass during the very goddamn week I’d come to see her. She answered only that she’d speak to me later, as she had plans to return to the arcade with whatever the hell his name was. She made a point of not asking me if I cared to join them.I would like to tell you, dear reader, that at that juncture I came back with a scathing reply, or at least an expletive-filled yelling fit. It would have been a somewhat less embarrassing (or, at least, more fraught with machismo) reaction than what I did, which was to turn without a further word, lock myself in my room, and weep quietly.I didn’t see much of her for the rest of the week. In fact, no one did, though that didn’t stop a family member or two from accusing me in varyingly broken English of being the one to monopolize her time, to which I reacted with all the grace of a stillborn cow.

My screamed speculation on the parentage of the third to do this was interrupted–midway through a suggestion that the mildly porcine tilt to his nose suggested a heritage, in the words of Bill Watterson, unusually rich in species diversity–by another goddamn pigfucking little shit, asking me if it was really necessary to be quite so profane. The moment of silence after I shot back with a query of whether it was really necessary to bring a man to a different country at considerable cost in order to ignore him and fuck some other asshole lasted long enough for me to exit stage left. I was only mildly surprised not to have been berated by Iris for this infraction against her “beloved” family when she no doubt later heard of it; I got the impression it’d only take one gentleman for her fickle priorities to switch, though I had wished it would’ve been me.She bid me goodbye when the time came for me to leave, but declined to accompany me and her mother to the airport; she and the dude from the arcade had plans for later. The drive was one of the more awkward half hours I can remember, spent largely in silence. I was not much surprised to be searched again at Canadian customs on the way back through Vancouver. It was just the way my luck wanted to work that week. A cautionary tale, I suppose mine is, of the perils involved both in long-distance romances, as well as the inescapable dumbness of pinning your hopes on someone you really don’t know very well at all. Maybe if I’d spent some more time actually talking to her, and less playing the game that was the only thing we had in common. Maybe if I’d read a little more into her sometimes-vapid responses to things I’d said. There are a great deal of maybes, and it’s entirely possible that events would not have culminated the way they did if I’d known then what I do now. But it was a learning experience. I knew better what wasn’t going to work the next time around, and the next time after that, and eventually I got it right.There is an epilogue, however, that I didn’t discover until some months later. While it doesn’t really make up for the contents of the week in question, at least I can look back on it with a vindictive giggle, proving once and for all that there really isn’t anything that isn’t in some way hilarious.Turns out the dude had herpes.

There was the guy who picked me up for our date with his friend in tow (as he didn’t have a driver’s license). It was a convertible, so you can imagine what my hair looked like by the time we got to the party. This was our first date, but the other couple with us were very “close”. Of course, that gave my date ideas he shouldn’t have been getting and he starts hitting on me before we even get to the party. There’s nothing like going down a busy street, in a convertible, with some guy trying to climb all over you. The party was ok, so we head on to dinner afterwards. My date smears salad dressing all over his face and doesn’t seem to realize it. I try to discreetly tell him; to no avail. He takes veggies out of his salad (that he doesn’t like) and throws them into my salad for me to eat. Of course, by this time I’m dying to ditch this guy and go home, so I don’t order any dessert, or drinks, nothing that will keep me there any longer than I have to be. As a result, all the way back to my house, my dream guy keeps telling me what a “cheap date” I am. I’m dropped off first, as the other couple wanted to go on to another party. My date actually thinks I’m going to invite him in, kiss him goodnight, etc. - and he still has salad dressing on his face! I can laugh about it now, but I didn’t date again for a long time after that!!

When I was in my mid-twenties, I fell hard for a guy I worked with. I was married at the time I started working with him. I felt we had a mutual attraction, but never acted upon it. I seperated from my husband, just as he was getting engaged to a girl back in his home state. We took up an affair in at the beginning of the summer and I remember we would go out to eat and he would call her and talk with her while I waited in the restaurant. I kept telling myself that he loved me and would not go through with the wedding. We actually lived together for about six months and I just knew he would not go through with it.

He actually left after the new year and came back married to her. I was so crushed and I still wonder what the hell I was thinking! We had so much fun together and the sex was really great. Once he was back, he found that he did not have the same relationship with her that he thought he would. I would listen with bitter amusement while he would complain that she had started nagging him about his habits. He made the comment that while they were dating she was fine with him, but once they married she decided he could change.

I remember having to bite my tongue to keep from saying “Of course she isn’t going to nag at you before you marry her, you might have changed your mind” I am ashamed to admit it, but we actually had an affair after he had married her, and I found that my feelings for him had changed also. I did not feel the same way, or maybe I had came to my senses and realized what kind of man he really was. I still look back at that after a decade and wonder what kind of person I was that I felt I had to be in a relationship like that. He actually contacted me about a year or two later and I found out, surprise, that they had divorced. I am now married to great man, and I cannot help but wonder if I would have appreciated him half as much as I do if I had not had that relationship experience to realize that not all men are created equal.

When I was about 16 or 17, a guy I dated suddenly became extremely possessive. I was so young that I was flattered by his attention which we would now called possessiveness or stalking. If he called my house and the line was busy, he would call everybody he could think of that I might be talking to - especially another young man I liked. One day after a band practice (he was in the band too) I went to another friends house (the other guy he thought I was talking to) to see where he was. He hadn’t shown up for band practice and I was concerned. I peeked around the corner and saw this other boyfriend come driving by. I had no idea that what he was doing was stalking as I was so young and at the time nobody had come up with the word “stalking.” I didn’t have a lot of self esteem so to have that kind of attention I thought was really cool. It was like “oh, he likes me.” What I should have thought was “oh, he’s a psycho; run the other way.” But like I said I was just so young and naive. I found out much later how really creepy he was and finally dumped him. It took a long time for me to realize what was going on, but I finally got rid of him. Finally!

I dated this guy very shortly last year. He was very affable and outgoing latino ad he had curly hair. I have a thing for curly hair and latin was like that cherry on top of it. I just love it. Its shallow and stupid but what is more stupid is how in this late stage in my life I didn’t listen to him. He recounted story after story of his dating life, (bad sign) and he kept telling me how he dated women who for whatever reason couldn’t accept him for who he was. A woman he dated for a year but would not tell her friends and family he was her boyfriend because he was not Cambodian. His ex-wifes family never accepted him, though he accepted the child they had together.Well I dug him so much and eventually he had to tell me, “You are not good enough for me!!” Who says that to a person, even if they are not good enough for you? I would never say that to anyone. We are not right for one another, anything but that. Amazing.

We used to call him Gary during the day, because his beautiful, colorless, eyes were inert and cruel until closing time at the winery. It was then that Greg emerged, his whole affect swelling and softening, and his gorgeous, snaggly teeth showing to the gums. He was incredibly loud, and never breathed through his nose.One night we ended up in a delirious tangle on the ground of a children’s park. And then, somehow, we dated for two years.Gary got wasted at a winery event and had to be hidden from management in a walk-in refrigerator. He ate all the roast beef in the interim. Gary woke me up with the incandescent sound of his urine splashing against the corner of our bedroom. This was echoed, a year later, by the splashing of his urine stream on a full sink of dirty dishes when I took too long in the bathroom. Gary hated waiting. Greg called me lolo and told me I would have the most beautiful daughters. Greg loved how my top lip formed into a little beak when I was perplexed. Greg introduced me as the best thing that had ever happened to him. Greg’s skin never lost that sweet scent of puppies and infants. Greg drove me around wine country with the top of his 1986 Saab rolled down and gangster rap blasting and made me feel as if the sunshine was actually invading my bones. Oh but Gary, Gary, never left us alone. Gary missed his flights because he was hung over, and I’d have to pick him up and drive him hundreds of miles to his accounting job. Gary hated vegetables and newspapers. I was always shocked at how easily he could become furious with me.

Once, I poured a Snapple over ice cubes, and he called me lazy for not putting it in the fridge and waiting. He got really irritable if I didn’t have sex with him daily. Blowjobs were insufficient. Eventually his penis ripped my vaginal opening and I got a two week rest to heal.But in the end, Gary knew best. On Halloween, Gary and I were dressed as zombies. He ran into some friends and didn’t want to take the last train to the bay, so I went alone. I missed it, and called him to come with me on the terrifying transbay bus. He didn’t want to. He wanted to stay and drink some more. He wanted to be surrounded by people who made him feel like he was a good person. He yelled in his best undead voice, “I am BREAKING UP with you! And my darlings, I accepted.

When we first started dating he’d said he was divorced. I know what some guys’ idea of divorce was (well, I’m thinking of moving out but haven’t done any paperwork) so I checked out his divorce records online. Through court records I learned that his ex had hired a private detective to follow him and later he was ordered to pay for those services. I was suspicious of his one female friend and later learned that her ex proclaimed that she had cheated on him (with a person who was in the same profession as the guy I was dating) and subpoenaed the other ex and the private detective during the female friend’s divorce proceedings. But even then I was dumb enough to fall for the “we’re just friends” routine. Periodically through our dating he would just flat-out not show up, and not call until the next day. His excuses were lame: “met with my accountant”, “met with my lawyer”, always at odd times of the evening. I’m supposed to be a smart, educated, career-minded woman, but no. Finally he’d blown me off one to many times and this time he didn’t even call. He eventually texted me, but it sounded like a cross between a breakup message and an attempt to keep me as an option: “Dear , blah blah, respect you very much, blah.”. Seriously, above all this, if you’ve gone out with someone for over a year and the only thing you have left is to whip out the Respect Card???? You know, as I’m typing this, it sounds so obvious where this was headed, but I ignored the signs. We got along so well together. The conversations were great, the sex was great, but still I was willing to overlook the obvious.

I was dating my boyfriend for almost a year and this was our first Valentine’s Day together. He came over to give me my gift, which was a nice watch. It wasn’t extravagant, but it was lovely and I truly appreciated it. Then he proceeds to tell me that we won’t be able to spend Valentine’s Day together because he was taking his two female friends out to dinner since they didn’t have anyone to spend Valentine’s Day with! Umm…EXCUSE ME?!? Needless to say, I was INFURIATED about his dinner plans! He was MY boyfriend and he should’ve spent Valentine’s Day with ME not his single female friends! That should’ve been a sign that his priorities were not in the right place. That was the first of MANY issues. We broke up the next year. What was I thinking?!? You live and you learn.

This actually happened to someone VERY close to me (I’ll call her Lisa) and I just about wanted to K-I-L-L her boyfriend over it! Lisa had been dating a guy for 7 years, they even moved in together. I become a roommate during the last 1 1/2 years. They were both very athletic and went to races all over California and Nevada, and Steve was also a personal trainer (at the encouragment of Lisa). At a local race a girlfriend told me that she’d seen Lisa’s boyfriend (let’s call him Steve) with Lisa and Steve’s hairstylist “hanging out” together. I warned Lisa about this and she said, “No, Steve’s just become her personal trainer, that’s why she saw them together.” But when Lisa went to her monthly appointment with her hairstylist that week, (I’ll call her Kelly), who she had been going to for over 7 years….Kelly walked up to her and said, “Oh, I made a mistake and double booked you so Emily will be doing your hair today” and walked off. No apology, no offer to rebook her or book her next appointment. This had NEVER happened before, so that’s when Lisa became very suspicious and confronted Steve who then confessed. Not only did her boyfriend break up with her, but so did her hairstylist!! The poor girl found out that not only was her boyfriend a loser, but so was her hairstlylist.

I met a guy thru another guy I worked with. He lives in California & I live in Florida. It started out as just “hi, how are you?”, very casual. But as time passed - it became more & more intense. We talked on the phone, we would IM each other, chat on FaceBook & send text messages every day, like we had actually met one another & were actually dating! He would send me pictures of himself-some of them pretty bold! -would ask me about my day, what plans I had for the night, etc-but by this point we were both “involved”! This went on for months until we decided that I would fly out to Ca. for a few days so we could actually spend time together-in person! I had my ticket & took time off work, got someone to dogsit & take care of my house & business -when he sends me a text asking me to change the days because his “soon to be” ex-wife was flying out the same week & she was staying with him, too! Stupid me! I change my plans-which was no easy task- & fly out earlier at his request. I fly from Florida to California on Christmas day for him to tell me, after 1 day, that he can’t “do this”!! He isn’t over his divorce-which hasn’t even happened because he just filed the papers on December 19th! He then asks me if I want to go to a friends house or he will get a flight home for me that day!! He gets out his phone, goes online & finds a flight leaving in an hour. We race to the airport only to find out that the flights is around $900 and I can get to Houston but nothing is flying back into Orlando until the next day. So he gets a flight for me for the next day, takes me back to the hotel & gets me a room, slids the key to me across the counter & tells me there is a shuttle that can take me to the airport the next day. At this point all I could do is turn around and walk away-which is what I did. I never heard from him again!?!

We met on Yahoo personals. He seemed perfect - he liked racing, was nice looking, worked for Harley-Davidson, and seemed so sweet. We dated for a year and a half - I never had a better time and hoped we would one day get married.One afternoon when I walked into his place, I noticed a print out of an email sitting on his desk. I admit it was wrong - but I read it. It was from a woman talking about her intimate relationship with my boyfriend - whom she referred to as her boyfriend. I was so flabbergasted I couldn’t even believe it. It got better! Later that afternoon, as he and I were fighting about the email, a woman showed up at the door. She was another one of his girlfriends. How dumb am I? While he was dating me, he was also dating women in Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin - and we all thought we were the only one. I hired a private investigator and they found out he was on all kind of dating sites and was having casual flings with people. So it wasn’t bad enough my boyfriend was a cheater but he now also exposed me to all kinds of STDs. So I’m now in recovery. I share my story in hopes that others might recognize him - and run! He’s a serial cheat and liar. And I deserve so much better!

I moved in with my Busy and Important boyfriend, the toast of Saratoga Springs, NY. Every day, when we walked his dog downtown, he’d stop and wave and yell at everybody. “Duuuude!” “Word up!” “My man!” (He’s not black, a surfer, or nineteen years old). I’d politely pause while the dog delivered a lawn sausage under the nearest hosta plant.”Aren’t you going to clean that up?” I asked innocently. He looked at me with daggers in his eyes. “Well, aren’t YOU Miss Perfect? No, I am not going to clean it up. Don’t make every single daily activity a chore for me. Besides, this is good fertilizer.”"No it’s not,” I rejoined, feeling, um, slightly…off-kilter. What the hell was this? “There are microbes in dog manure that are very bad for people.”"Nonsense,” he retorted, red-faced, and on we went. Every day, it was the same thing. So I bought a box of Baggies and stuffed my pockets with them. “You do what you want when you’re alone,” I explained. “But if I’m gonna walk with you, someone’s going to clean up after the dog, and I don’t mind if it’s me.” I got used to the sensation of the steamy little mound in my palm, insulated with plastic. The nearest garbage can, and out it went. Voilà.I didn’t realize, of course, that one of the things I had said had offended him: somehow the idea of dog-doo being unhealthy rankled him. After all, it was his dog, wasn’t it? It shits in four ice cream flavors. Maybe that was the rationale. There was always dog mess in our driveway. He was constantly stepping in it and tracking it all over the kitchen. So stay with me—Months later, many months, I took off to visit a friend in the City, packing a toothbrush as I left. It was an airline toothbrush, the kind with a plastic hat on it that snaps shut. A hat to keep it clean. I kept the toothbrush in a basket under the sink where my extra hair conditioner and scrunchies also lived. Good place to keep things. Right? Right.Next day, I came back from my trip, feeling funny. Feeling really funny. I felt downright feverish when I got into bed. I felt like a fried clam, in fact. And within an hour, I was cramped and sweaty. I shook, I shivered, I curled up next to him for warmth. Periodically, I’d get up and go to the bathroom, a noisily embarrassing experience. Could this be food poisoning? I didn’t think so. I’d had food poisoning. This was an intestinal microbe, all right, but one with a difference.All week long, bathroom trips. I went all liquid inside. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink coffee. I had him buy me a case of Ensure. I wore two pairs of underwear to bed with my PJs. And somehow—I’ll be darned if I can remember how the information bubbled up—he mentioned the toothbrush.It was just a junk toothbrush, he said. “Really?” I replied, startled. “How is that?”"It was in that basket of trash under the sink,” he said.”That’s not trash.”"Of course it’s trash. It’s trash. It’s nothing but trash.”"Those are cosmetics. Cosmetics aren’t trash.”"Well, it looks like trash to me.”Trash toothbrush is excellent for undoing the damage of the careless doggie in the driveway. My beau had cleaned his shoes with it. Washed it off, put it back in the plastic container, returned it to the basket, and it went to New York with me and then into my mouth.So he tested my theory and proved me right: lawn sausages are full of microbes that can make people very sick. Like Giardia.Eat Shit and Die! I guess that was the message.I ate shit and lived.And left.

In high school I dated this guy named Wayne. He was pretty goth, but I thought it was cool. He always wore Cannibal Corpse T-shirts and loved that song “Black Number 9″. Anyway, he seemed really sweet and was sort of dangerous so I was in. He used to ride his bike to my house - more than 10 miles round trip - and he wasn’t in great physical shape so he used to show up at my house all the time sweaty and out of breath and then announce that he had thrown up on the ride over. I was pretty crazy back then, because I thought that was sweet rather than weird.He also used to give me flowers all the time. Which also seemed sweet, except that they were fake flowers and almost always appeared dirty and faded. I didn’t dwell on it, but one day I went to his house and he had a huge box of the flowers. I asked him where he got so many fake flowers from and he said they were from a cemetary - that when the flowers had been on the grave too long they took them away and dumped them in a special trash bin and he took them from there. Please bear in mind that I was about 14 at the time, so I should be given a little slack for not yet knowing what a red flag this was. I supposed I thought he was frugal and resourceful? He was trying to be sweet, right? The real breaking point, though, was when he made a series of shocking and fairly disgusting confessions during a conversation. I won’t outline the full details but it involved strange use of bodily fluids (his own, unfortunately), necrophelia and a very disturbing picture of family life if we ever had children. I ended it immediately, and he responded by telling me that I was stuck up and calling me “Skelotor” to other people (apparently I was too skinny). A solid 13 years later my family STILL makes fun of me for ever dating him and refer to him as “Creepy Wayne”. And I didn’t even tell them that last part… Sincerely,Recovered Judgementally-Impaired Person

What was I thinking…I should have come to my senses a mutiple of times. I was 21 years old when I met my boyfriend and proceeded to date him for 2.5 years. After the first year I was working and realized that you could look up information on the county records for land use and information. My boyfriend had been wanting to find some of this information for his work and I happily messaged him the information as I chcked out the site. I wanted to see if there was a charge so I picked up a topic (marriage license) and decided to just enter his name not expecting anything. But there he was, currently married to his ex gf (for apparent ilegal reasons). I agreed to stay with him if he applied for divorce in the next 3 months….what was I thinking. He didn’t so I stayed true to my word. He asked for me back two month later. Again what was i thinking when I said yes. I was out of state with him a couple months later for the Super Bowl party and the second day i had to stay in by myself since I was so sick. He said he would be home early but after him being gone for 12 plus hours I decided to snoop on his cousin’s lap top who we were staying with.

I know this was wrong and I shouldn’t have but I knew i would find something and the calling was just there. I pulled open photo albums because I wanted to see pictures from his recent trip to brazil (he alays claimed he never brought his camera). Going through the album I say pictures of him cuddling with a girl and kissing a girl on the beach and this was on camera, who knows what happened off camera. He promised that’s all that happened and he wouldn’t go on anymore boy’s trips. I stayed with him…what was i thinking!!! A couple months later he goes on another trip to Vegas. I tell him I don’t want him to go but say’s it’s a family trip (him and his cousin, the one who took the pictures) and he was going anyway. He notified me of this 3 days prior. Shortly after I inform him i am going to Los Angelos on a girl’s trip and he breaks up with me. His reason, he thought I would cheat.After I came back he tried to get back together with me but I know what I was thinking this time. No way! I recieve an email from him saying how I am immature and all I can offer a guy is my looks and sex (wish i could post the whole email here) and then attached is a spreadsheet evaluating me on 50 different charaticss that are important to him. I only one I score high on is sex to try to prove his point. I ignore him and several months pass and I recieve text messages saying how he is seeing another girl whose body is so much better than mine and I am an anorexic, fat bitch. I shouldn’t but did text back and said “I don’t believe and I don’t care”. That was a mistake because a month later I recieve another email with just the prhase “I’m so sorry…but I told you I don’t lie” with pictures attached of him being intimate with the new girl. At this point we had been broken up for almost a year so it doesn’t bother me but in the back of my head I always ask myself..”What was i thinking?!”

My sister called me about 3:00 on the Friday afternoon before Memorial Day weekend. “I have breast cancer,” she said.Her husband and two 20-something daughters had already left town for various long weekend festivities. She had planned three days of being blissfully alone and catching up on chores, uninterrupted. She discovered a hard, pea-sized lump in her left breast in February and what with one thing and another, it had taken three months to get multiple doctor appointments, various tests, a biopsy, and finally to run by the radiologist’s office to pick up her scans. The radiologist handed her a large manila envelope and told her point-blank, “You have breast cancer. You need to call your doctor first thing Monday morning.”I had plans myself - great plans - for the long weekend. My two sons were with their father and I was going to hide out with The Last Bad Boyfriend - drink, talk, screw, eat, nap, swim, walk. But, sisters come first in times like this. I told my sister to come immediately to my building - I worked for a medical school and the first thing we could do was look at the scans then review the documents and get interpretations that made sense to us.I called The Last Bad Boyfriend and told him the horrible news. His first response was, “Can’t you do that on Monday?” And he is a physician.There are more - the relationship lasted almost 8 years.

Until I claimed it, the pullout sofa had rarely functioned as a bed. It was planted in the middle of Jen’s living room/eating area, upholstered in a beige cotton that easily picked up dirt. The sheets didn’t match. They were leftovers from sets that had once been complete. Jen handed me a sleeping pill. “Just take half and make sure you’re already in bed,” she warned. “You’ll be out like a light.” I unfolded the sofa, draped the sheets over the flimsy mattress, crawled under a pilling electric blanket, with its guts removed. I made sure I was settled, as settled as I could be given all that had happened, swallowed the drug whole and switched off the light. I waited impatiently for peace.

Just days before, I had been living it up with John in Frankfurt, Rome and Lisbon. I was not in love when he first offered me his hand, but his insistence was intoxicating, and at 37, it was a relief to be wanted. We became domestic after just a couple of dates, and then barely weeks later I uprooted from San Francisco to travel with him. Within a month, we moved to Europe. Away from family and friends, familiar neighborhoods and lingo, we were each other’s everything. John cooked me pork chops, and gave me haircuts. We shared a suitcase.

With my head propped up on the sofa cushion, I couldn’t help but see the day glow numbers on the VCR clock. 11:15, 1:45, 4:30, 6AM. Twenty-four hours earlier, John and I had flown in from Portugal to the sublet apartment we kept in San Francisco nestled high in a eucalyptus grove. I breathed in on the way up, and was reminded of a recent spa visit. There wasn’t much furniture, but the wall-to-wall white carpeting was lush, and it felt good to roll around on it. The front room had an expansive view of downtown. I would miss this place. Everything was fine when we went to bed, as far as I knew. In a few weeks, we would be off again. Back to Rome, shooting his film. Just enough time to share a handful of meals with dear friends and re-pack.

Soon after we awoke, an argument rose out of nowhere, some minutiae about receipts. It grew as large as our city view. John was talking crazy. He words didn’t make sense. Something about going on to Rome without me. “It’s over?” I huddled in between the wood console and the frame of our bedroom door. I was gasping for air. We had never fought like this. What if he meant it? Where would I go? My life in San Francisco had been closed up for years. Who would welcome me back?

John was deranged then and after, too. He never reflected on his cruelty that night or took it back. He left me drifting, without warning, in icy waters. At least I had the pullout, though it had seen better days. For the time being, we were a good fit.

What was I thinking when I thought being a friend with benefits with my ex-husband was a good idea when I knew he was seeing someone else, with whom he just spend this Valentine’s weekend with, yet he stopped by yesterday to see me. Talk about feeling like the other woman, oh and by the way there were plenty of other woman when we were married. So again I have to ask my self WHAT AM I THINKING AND WHY CAN’T I MOVE ON?

What was I thinking?

I was thinking
Of his lips
His cute butt
His perfect voice
His sweet touch
I didn’t see the sad behind the grey of his eyes
I didn’t see the scared human
With a twisted back
And willowy chest
So soft and pale like a baby’s
I saw only the flicker of man
Projected from inside a boy

I was thinking of the vows
Said one day on the sand
With salt in my hair
Slowly wilting the white orchid
I thought only of forever
And daily need
That a think like us could never break
Crack or tear
Scar like the ones that run up and down my chest
Now my heart has ones to match

I was thinking of only
The rose without thorns
And unreal created thing
A hothouse creature
Manipulated and altered
Not a thing of the wild
Or the sun and the earth
Not a thing of truth

I see the world in rose
With fairies by ponds
With mermaids in the sea
With energy coming from the earth
Winding around her children
I see good
I saw only good
And this is the way
I will continue to think

I’m lucky, in a way. I really only have one boyfriend in my life who if he called I would hang up on, if I saw him on the street I would cross to the other side, if he ‘friended’ me on Facebook I would block him. Silas.

He was my first and worst relationship.I was fifteen on the cusp of sixteen when I met him. He wore scarves jauntily around his neck and was on the debate team. He bantered cleverly with his friends and wrote with a fountain pen. He loved higher math and photography. I felt special to be noticed by him. We fell into love in a rush and tumble. I managed to overlook his friend’s friendly warnings and the dark presence of his recent ex at all the parties–her murderous looks boring into me every chance she got. She had broken up with him, hadn’t she? It was over.

As the months wore on he began to explain to me how she was the one he credited for everything he knew about relationships and how he still relied on her for advice and direction. When we kissed he would reminisce about how the passion we felt reminded him of the passion he had felt with her. When we discussed topics of the day he would mention how she had been so good about supporting his views.

Walking down the hallway we saw her lying on her stomach to study and he asked me over lunch had I noticed the shape of her butt and had I ever considered taking up running like she did? I hadn’t. Only a mile a week he said would do the trick. I don’t remember being angry or offended. I don’t recall feeling that anything was out of place (other than the shape of my butt). He said he loved me and that trumped everything. For a while.
Prom season arrived. I was excited to dress up with him and be part of a fantastic prom couple. I don’t dance he said. And furthermore if you truly love me you wouldn’t want me to go because it would make me feel bad about not dancing. You don’t want to make me feel bad do you? For the first time my answer was slow in coming. I told my friend Anne how disappointed I was. I was only a sophomore and without him I couldn’t go. That’s bullshit she said. I don’t have a date she said, wear a tuxedo and go with me. I went to Steve with the wonderful solution. I got a cold reception. The point was for neither of us to go. Not for him to stay at home while I went off and danced the night away posing as a boy. If I really loved him I would not go at all.

“If I really loved him…” “If I really loved him….” This phrase rang in my ears; waking me up to all the other times I’d heard it before. “If I really loved him…” I went to prom. As a boy. With a matching red tie and cummerbund to match Anne’s dress. Steve decided to camp out in his friend’s hotel room and would come down regularly to summon me out to the hallway to tell me how bored he was. He didn’t like how I was behaving; he thought I was being a bitch. Anne started to get annoyed about how much time I had to spend in the hallway. As the night went on his comments became more threatening and parental. He told me how patient he’d been with me, that it took almost a Christ-like level of patience to deal with me. His words. He pitted himself against the flashing lights, all you can eat appetizers and booming music of prom and lost. In the carpeted nook of the hotel hallway he tugged his rumpled white silk scarf and finally he demanded that I leave prom, abandon Anne or else…we were through. Ok. I said. Ok.

As I walked back into the ballroom I knew it wasn’t over–not by a long shot–but I could breathe again. It was only a matter of time.

“The magic woman of the forest prepares to battle the evil lily pads.” I was a freshman in college and working as a grip for a senior’s BFA film project, which meant sitting with ten other grips on a once-white sofa that smelled of stale beer, ignoring the history of sexual acts preformed on it, to which I had been the unfortunate witness during the year’s smattering of parties held at this bachelor pad (now film set), code-named the “Flamingo.”

It was day two and still none of us had touched a light, a sandbag, or anything remotely resembling film equipment. We were playing word games. Occasionally the art designer would run through the room, covered in orange paint or shouting at the sleeping art team for more chicken wire. The assistant director would stop in from time to time asking if we were hungry. One or two people would look up at the noise and, like checking the caller I.D. to see that it was only mom, would put their heads back down—the message machine would get it.

Our current game involved strips of paper folded into eight sections. In a circle, each of us held one in our laps. In the first blank box, we wrote a sentence, then passed it to the person to our right, who drew an interpretive picture of it, only to fold the sentence down, leaving just the picture remaining. Then, the papers would be passed again. A sentence would be written about the drawing. The drawing would be folded, hidden and the new sentence would be passed—a chain of blind interpretations.

My friend Anna had just passed me a picture of a forest. In-front of it an angry, slender figure, with pointed ears, slanted eyes, tight clothing and a bandana stood in an on-guard manner—like Nicole Ritchie trying out for the part of Legolas in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. In front of her lay a row of circles with a random smattering of dots on each. I wrote: “The magic woman of the forest prepares to battle the evil lily pads.” I passed it.

When all eight boxes were filled and the papers completely folded, we’d unravel them into bouts of laughter, God turned into a happy pumpkin and Clive Owen into an albino ghost. Sentences appeared that would remain in our repertoire of quick punch lines: “Hey remember ‘the musical creature in the sky that sang of a time when gas prices were lower’ or ‘the sad dog with an udder who was surprised when his ass turned into a fan and fall commenced?’” We would unfold these nonsensical chains of strange sentences and crude drawings in fits of hysterical chuckles. Favorites were passed around. We gathered our heads close to see how our minds could lead each other astray. The boy in the white-striped shirt, who was obese as a child and, as a result, could stretch his neck skin out like a lizard if you got him drunk or bored enough, laughed, but it wasn’t like the other times—he looked at me. He passed his paper to the next person, a mousy girl, raised in a hippie commune in Maryland, whose hair always smelled like pot. She also looked at me and started laughing. The paper continued its vicious path, until it reached my friend Anna. “Oh my gosh!” She said in her rounded Pittsburgh accent: “Caitlin!” She handed me the sheet of paper.

The first box read: “The young man sets off down the path:” the beginning was normal enough. Below it, someone drew a small stick figure, whose eyes were fast little dashes, giving him a hastened, angry look. The head was a small and drawn quickly, the two ends of the circle didn’t meet up, one overlapped the other at the forehead, like a headband. The path before the figure was comprised of round stones with little dashes, perhaps for rough, visual effect.

The fascinating part about this game is that every person—just as one reads from left to right—draws from left to right. The man appeared first in the sentence, so he was drawn on the left, the path, being last, stretched out to the right. Often mysterious patterns and continuities are carried from drawing to drawing, simply by the structure of the connecting sentences, without any visual information needed. From the first drawing alone, I knew where it led: “The magic woman in the forest prepares to battle the evil lily pads.” What was so funny? I saw the sentence that connected the first drawing, to the one I had interpreted. The sentence read: “Elijah Knowles emerges out of the woods following the pizza path” “Oh my god.” I let my head rest in my hands. I laughed in a nervous, last resort kind of squeal. We all were.

“Oh no. Oh no. Don’t let him see this!” I shook my head. I was dating Elijah Knowles. I was dating the magic woman of the forest and, in that moment, I knew I wouldn’t be for much longer. That instant had finality like the edge of paper; there was no more room. We had been a series of moments strung together, evolving into an obscurity of missed cues and old expectations hanging dry on someone else’s clothesline.

We had started dating after a drunken hook-up in the Flamingo’s skuzzy basement with fifty other film kids loving-up on each other in the dark. A week before, Elijah had professed his love to me in that same house, while the world rolled and sloshed with cheap vodka and the bodies of people I don’t remember. There were at least eight of us tipping and rolling on that white couch, trying to find steady ground. The music was loud and he shouted in my ear: “I really like you!” I screamed back: “Great, but do you mind that I am in love with someone else?” In the morning he didn’t remember. A week later, with enough rum inside my stomach to set the entirety of Boston ablaze, I decided to try to forget the “boy back home” and there was Elijah: available with a decent sense of humor and the aloof aura of an on-campus celebrity.

He was freakishly devoted to film lighting, spewing out facts about aperture, rigs and light temperature. In the microcosm of our school’s film department, he was a rising star. I got a cheap thrill from the second-hand attention. “Whose the special person?” Lanky boys would ask as we passed them in the dormitory hallways. They’d walk off smirking and sometimes even give Elijah a high-five. I let myself become a thing attached to his arm.

Along with all the film crew boys, Elijah adopted the uniform of tight, ball-breaking, hipster pants, topped off with a bandana tied around his head. He had a small frame, exaggerated by his form-fitting fashion statement, hence, the magical woman of the forest. It was no secret that I could pick him up—I consistently won our wrestling matches. Yet somehow I was attracted to the angst he exuded. When I first met him, he had a pink splotch of dye in his hair, just because he was bored one day, and two lip piercings that said: “fuck you” to his southern gentleman upbringing. Standing next to each other we looked like cruel joke, a Saturday Night Live scenario of a hippied-out Anna Nicole Smith dating a thirteen-year-old Jet Li after a bad day at the body-piercing parlor.

None of this bothered me. I folded it out of sight and kept playing. I continued writing secret letters to the boy back home. Elijah and I became official. We had sex. Terrible sex. Sex with Elijah was a fluorescent lights on, dorm room, make-it-quick-so-the-guy-next-door-doesn’t-hear affair. We had a routine, from who took their pants off when, to which breast he mouthed first. One day, at lunch with his friends, a loud girl in a purple jacket started talking about prude couples “who only fucked in the missionary position.” I choked on my soup. When I think of good sex, my mind always goes to the scene in the fourth season of the Sopranos when Tony bones the BMW sales woman in the nocturnal exhibit at the Zoo. They’re exposed, right out there with the snakes, bats, and hedgehogs, school groups threatening to turn the corner at any moment. He penetrates her and they move back and forth for a moment. Then she looks at him and says “Stop, just stop.” Tony is confused but does. They pause, arched, shaking, feeling that high of nerves, joy and fear that surges through the skydiver before leaping out into thin chance, about to know the world as a destination, a death, a home-safe, all the while wondering if they are about to see as God sees, giving themselves over to prayer and a parachute. All that next-door to the lions, the food court and the howling monkeys, all that from the absence of movement. The bizarre, the savoring, the slowness—that is sensuality.
Sex with Elijah was more like making love to a paint mixer. Afterward, I associated it with the machine gun sound-effect little boys like to make with their mouths: eah-eah-eah-eah-eah-eah-eah-eah-eah-eah-eah! Finish. Once I tried. Once I said: “Stop. Slow down.” “Why?” He said and continued. Not only was he afraid of discussing or experimenting with sex, but he was afraid of others knowing we had sex. Despite the “signal” system we set up with his roommate, whenever we heard a knock on the door, he’d jump into his clothes, stick a sweatshirt on me and open the door, like nothing had happened or would happen. We had to schmooze with his friends and entertain his perpetually stoned roommate, unfulfilled, still smelling of sweat and cum, me, braless with my hair in tangles.

A knock would sound. He’d freeze. “Let them knock.” I’d say. “No. Let’s just stop.” “Why?” I’d ask. “I just don’t want them to know.” “Know that we’re having sex?” I asked. “Yeah.” He’d say like I was finally getting it. “But they do know.” “Yeah,” He’d say “but not right now.” “Is now not a good time?” I’d ask, but the sweatshirt would already be over my head. The door would open. It reminded me of the time my grandmother confessed to me how my grandfather refused to be seen buying toilet paper: “Everyone shits!” she said indignantly. I refused to see the problem. The rest of the story is textbook-bad relationship material: I started neglecting my friends. I realized he was an alcoholic. I cleaned up his puke on numerous occasions. During his southern upbringing, he also picked up what the south is trying desperately to leave behind: racism, bigotry and misogyny. I ignored it all.

Why? How could so many poor decisions line themselves up without my intervention? I now realize that something bigger was happening: I was unhappy. Not just unhappy with my relationship, but with my lifestyle as a whole. I didn’t like my school, my city or the path I seemed to be careening down at lightning speed. I used Elijah in every definition of the term. I used the physical closeness of our relationship, despite its shortcomings, as a crutch. I used him as a doll: an arm to hold me and a body to sleep next to me. I used the semblance of our relationship as a mask of normalcy. I used him to forget the past, but it still nagged at me: when we kissed on the subway, when we ran across the frozen pond throwing snowballs, before we fell asleep at night. He was a distraction and an abstraction.

It scares me how easily I let myself fall into such a negative situation. Everyday I thank the fate that brought me to that film set and that word game, the fate that passed me the drawing of the magical woman. It was the sheer bizarreness of the situation, the hilarity of my inability to recognize my own boyfriend, which made me realize I had, in fact, lost the ability to recognize myself.

While this essay is, on one hand, a self-centered, cathartic release, on the other, I am writing it as a message of hope. Friends confess to me that they date people because they feel they should, because it seems timely, or because there is something greater they don’t want to deal with: insecurities, stress or malcontent. I am writing this as proof that there is a way out, another answer, a new direction.

A year later, I left film school and moved abroad. I am now studying in Europe. I have been to more countries that I can count on my fingers and have learned more about people, relationships and culture than I could have in thirty years at the Flamingo. I learned to face my past and the fact that I am still in love with someone I am not ready to be with. This essay is about valuing the self, more than a relationship and finding definition from within, rather than from another.

This isn’t an anti-love essay. Love is as necessary as breathing, as beautiful as gold light and as exciting as a finger slowly moving down your spine. But love is something that shouldn’t be saved for one other person. It should be practiced everyday. Love should be given and received from friends, family and strangers. Love comes out of every moment if you let it.

After Elijah, I stopped trying to use a relationship as a safe hideaway. I cast away my fear of what others thought and my pre-conceived notions of what was right. It took my grandmother fifty-five years of marriage to conjure up the courage to leave her high school-sweetheart fantasy and realize that she had fallen out of love. She is now with another man and the happiest I have ever seen her.

I don’t date as often, but when I do, it means more. I’ve learned to value myself, my freedom and my feelings. I still sometimes dream about Elijah. He appears, attempting to convince me to take him back. When I wake up, I question my decisions and wonder what would I do if I saw him again. For a moment I feel regret as I picture the moment we kissed in Times Square with large snowflakes falling around us and sticking to our hair, but then I see the magic woman of the forest. I laugh. I work my way up the chain of memory, unfolding the crying, the puke and the bad sex and I know I am done with all of that and that I am ready. I am ready to pour my love into something real. I choose to give my love to today.

I’m sure you have heard the saying “the heart wants what it wants”. Well, my heart inexplicably always wants the person who is the most capable of damaging it. Perhaps in a previous life I was a masochist and just a twinge of that lives on within me, I can’t be sure.

I was a 19 year old college sophomore when I met Luke for the first time. I was sitting cross legged in the crowded common area of my dormitory watching music videos with a group of friends. From behind me I heard the quiet strumming of a guitar so quiet it could have been my imagination. I turned and saw what appeared to be my wistful teenage girl’s fantasy turned reality- an attractive young man playing guitar. If he wasn’t a rock star he certainly looked the part. He wore a black and white baseball shirt un-tucked over black dickies. A ball chain necklace hung around his neck with a guitar pick string from it. He was looking down toward his acoustic and mouthing words as his hands moved so quickly and elegantly over the strings. GOD was this real? Was I dreaming it?

He entwined himself into my life quickly- calling me pet names, sleeping in my dorm room every night, making friends with all my friends. He joined a band and told me how he was going to make it big and take care of us. His guitar would pay the bills, we would just reap the benefits.I was completely enamored and let my own needs go so I could help complete his. We moved to our respective parents’ houses for the summer- over an hour away from each other.

I drove to visit him twice a week, he came to see me once a month. I left work early and took days off to see his band play, all the while sitting in a dark corner with another band girlfriend. Girls swooned over him, just as I had. I noticed the flirty smile was not reserved for me, neither were the pet names. We were all cutie, baby, princess, hot mama. How original. After a whirlwind 4 month romance, it was almost time for school to resume. Luke and a few of his friends were going to a music store near my house so I decided to join. We stood in the aisle surrounded by indie and emo bands with haircuts that looked so familiar to me after the months I spent in the basements of local churches and backyards with the band. He turned to me and said “we should get married.”

There was no ring, no romance, no dropping to one knee, just a sentence. I stood silent for minute before I turned to him and gave my one word answer: “okay.”

Things worked out just as they should and we never tied the knot. We planned a long engagement because we were so young, and love faded. He met a young girl (15 to be exact) at the summer camp he worked at and began dating her within a couple weeks of leaving me “to take a break”. Oh, the insanity.

First, go with friends to a bar on a snowy night. Feel at your best, like you could be anyone. Smile, be radiant and throw your head back when you laugh. Be introduced to the friend of a friend of a friend who has been watching you from a dark corner. Talk for hours about nothing and realize how much you have in common. Have him walk you home.

In the quiet of the night hear how your footsteps magically crunch the snow in unison. Agree to meet the next night.The following night realize that he is older and shorter that originally perceived. Note that he is also brilliant and funny enough to make up for the shortcomings. Laugh a lot. Drink a lot. Laugh some more. “Did I mention I’m a doctor?” he says.In the back of your mind start planning the wedding.See him every night for the next three months.

When you go to movies, imagine you and he are the main characters. Sit together on the same side of the bench in all-night coffee shops. Go to bookstores. Discover that you both like Historical Fiction. Go to expensive restaurants, hold hands from across the table, ignore the waiters. Lose a lot of sleep. Give thanks to the gods that you finally know what it is to be loved, loved, loved. Feel yourself bursting from the inside out. Imagine yourself splattered all over the bedroom wall. Travel to LA for work. Be gone 4 days. Have him call you everyday. Have him call you every night. Have him call you at 3am two nights in a row just to talk. Lose more sleep.Have him surprise you at the airport. Have him give you a hug, a kiss and ask, “Did anyone hit on you?” Think he said, “Did anyone hit you.” On the ride from the airport have him ask, “Why don’t you move in?” Be thrilled. Say yes.

Saturday morning, have him arrive at your apartment before you’ve had your coffee. You haven’t started packing. Have him tell you won’t need much. Think that is so romantic.His apartment is a high-rise overlooking the park. You have part of a closet, a shelf in the medicine cabinet and a view to die for. Wonder what you will tell your mom when she asks why you never answer your phone. Arrive home late one evening. Have him ask, “Did anyone hit on you?” Realize he’s the jealous type. Think it’s “cute.” No one has ever been jealous of you before because this is the first time you’ve ever really been in love, love, love, and this is just how you thought it would be, having someone love you so much they become sick with jealousy just like in the movies and isn’t it adorable how anytime you go anywhere alone he always asks, “Did anyone hit on you?”

Let him pick you up from work. “I might be late tonight,” you warn.“I’ll wait,” he says.On the way home he is unusually quiet. You want to ask, “Is anything wrong?” but don’t.Get tangled together in the bed sheets. Lose more sleep. Wake up remembering the PBS program where a python is smothering a rabbit just before he swallows her whole. Your toes try to wiggle away but your legs won’t let them.Begin to get tired. Really, really tired. Take the train home, fall asleep, miss your stop.
Have the conductor wake you up in New Jersey. Get back to the city, call and explain. Be nervous but wonder why.

Have him sitting by the phone when you get there. Notice a hole in the wall the size of his fist. Tell him that you’re sorry. Watch him come at you like a charging rhino. Move out of the way just as he puts another hole in the wall. Watch his face burn red and his eyes disappear under angry folds of flesh. Feel the air move as his fist slams the wall by your right ear.Turn and run. Run as fast as your little rabbit legs can carry you. Take a taxi back to your old apartment. Lock the doors and be glad you never gave him a key.

Lose more sleep.The next day get red roses at work, a profusion of roses that look like a funeral spray. Don’t read the note. Realize that he thinks you like red roses, but you don’t, they give you hives. Decide to walk home instead of taking the train. See couples walking hand in hand.

Shudder and walk faster.

Every so often you run into a couple who is happily married and loves to tell the story of how they were “high school sweethearts”. I abhor these couples, primarily because my “high school sweetheart” turned out to be an egotistical jerk.

That’s the nicest way to put it - I’ve phrased it much more colorfully in the past. It’s really a shame - Connor and I started out so well, I really thought that we had some sort of future. He’s quite good at that, convincing people that he’s worth their time. But really, for the better part of two years, everything was beautiful. We were in love, two young adults content to spend every minute together. I went to his lacrosse games, he visited me at work. We went to China with our choir together, and we went to graduation together. He took me to every dance, and I took him to every party. We even had a special place, a deserted sports field in my town, where he would take me every time something important was going on between us.

So after we graduated, I imagined that we’d stay together, that everything would be wonderful forever. Alas, I was young and stupid. I suppose the first red flag appeared one night after having a quickie in his car - cliche, I know, but we were young and hormones were raging. Long story short, the condom let us down. Naturally, I panicked. He soothed me, explaining that this is what Planned Parenthood was for, and that once I took the morning-after pill, everything would be fine. He dropped me off in front of my house and kissed me on the head. Then he reached into his wallet and handed me 80 bucks - “This should cover it,” he said. I stared after him as he drove away, mouth gaping like a fool.

He didn’t take me to the clinic; one of my girlfriends did. Clearly he had never intended to. Yet I trusted our relationship, and although I could feel resentment beginning to build up in me, I did my best to ignore it and kept quiet. I wasn’t pregnant, so what was the point in being angry about it? It was in the past. To celebrate our graduation and the beginning of our adult lives, 10 of my friends and I retreated to the Jersey Shore for the weekend, along with Connor and the rest of 2008’s high school graduates. It was the infamous Senior Week exodus and all sorts of debauchery ensued.

Unfortunately, Connor and I had begun to fight incessantly and living in close quarters and drinking excessively didn’t help. We made it through the first two nights by staying out of each other’s way, but on the third night, all hell broke loose. Connor was drunk and I was not. I was sitting in my bed with one of my best friends, when he stumbled in and announced that he wanted to sleep. Irritated at the way he had behaved, I told him he was welcome to join us but we weren’t moving. As expected, an argument followed, and soon we were screaming with full force. It was all coming out, the feeling of how he didn’t care, his constant need for attention, and how he always thought he was right. After several minutes of yelling, he left the room and I followed.

Once in the hallway, he turned and looked at me. “What, Connor?” I asked him. Rather than answer, he yelled in frustration and threw out his fist, punching a hole in the wall inches from my face. As I stared at him, shocked, I heard my friend inhale sharply and move behind the door. At that moment, as we stared at each other, I knew it was over.

“I think you should go home,” I told him, “and I don’t think we should talk for a while”. He gripped his fist, wincing, but looked at me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, it’s just - ” but I cut him off. “No.” I turned and retreated into the room, shutting the door behind me. My friend closed me into the hug I so desperately needed, but I didn’t cry, I just breathed. Relief hit me like his fist had hit the wall, and I knew that I would never be one of those people who end up with their high school boyfriends. But I would also never be that close to my high school boyfriend’s clenched fist, and that was a trade-off I was more than happy to make.

You didn’t get it. Didn’t get how it is the way it is. How falling leads to fallen, and fallen brings fear to ever get back up and try again for Love. I wanted to not get that. But I did.

I knew as well as you how it feels when you push two opposing ends together and hope. The hope’s the thing that stalled me from ending it, us. That hoping to mend, to get back to where the skin was fresh as the vantage point from innocence to now, but it wasn’t. Every try felt like a try before I’d want some more, and you’d want some less. And then as time led our opposing want want wanting to each other, we would sit stalled on pavement with hollow eyed glares…like the last time I saw you. I was sitting on your driveway as you stood looking down on me, and I wanted you more than you knew, and you wanted me more than you’d like to admit, because then you would become second to no one else but yourself. And as I asked if “this was it”, and your silence weighed heavier, and asked if you were “just gonna leave me here”, and without a second left to reconsider your hot out of conscience thoughts, you pressed out a YES, you chose you.

Then, well hell there was no more fuel to pump into my knee-jerk reactions to run back or towards us, the classic end all BE ALL cycles of feelings without reason that was all I ever knew with you, because at that moment, your reasoning cut the cord to all my emotions. And without feelings, we had nothing. And that was the way our story ended. I didn’t have a word left to say, but it didn’t matter because I wanted you to have the last word. I wanted you to still hear your own voice, whatever attempt at preserving your needs to be you, some good ol- self-talk for you to shout out to air as even your echo became haunted by every moment of silence I left.

I had been dating this guy for about 3 months. He was one of my closest friends fiances close friends. Everyone thought it was the best idea that we get together. Who doesn’t want their best friend dating their guy’s best friend, sounds too good to be true. We didn’t live that close so we had to drive out to see each other on weekends. It was a little under 3 hours to get to his place. He was nice enough but I think I knew deep down that he wasn’t the guy for me, but I haven’t had the best luck with men so I figured I’d give him a chance and see where it went.

The more we spent time together the more it seemed like he liked me than I liked him but again I wanted to give him a chance. Although he seemed to be more into me than I was into him it did seem as though I was the one going out his way to see him more often than he was driving my way. Which at first I always made excuses for: “Oh well he had already planned something for that weekend so it just makes more sense for me to go there.” As the summer went on the more we spent time together, I was driving out his way to see him and I realized while I was there we really weren’t even doing much. We would hang out at his house, maybe go to dinner. It was summertime, why weren’t we going out and doing fun stuff!? The times we did do anything was when he wanted to go water skiing. At least those times my friend and her fiance came along so I got to see her. At this point I am still trying to give the relationship a shot, I mean he is a nice guy and treats me good.Then the questions started. It was like no matter what I said or did he’d think something was wrong. It was quite strange really.

He’d be telling me how he wanted me to see a certain movie for weeks so I finally agree to watch it, we put the dvd in and not 10 minutes into the movie he’s asking; “What’s wrong? You seem distant?” Distant??? What was he talking about, I was watching the movie he insisted I see! What was I suppose to do, put the movie on and spark up a conversation? The first couple of times this happened I didn’t think much of it but then these types of questions seemed to come up more and more often. I’d come home from a long day at my job that I was not very fond of and we’d be talking on the phone, I’d say something on the lines of “Babe, it’s been a long day, don’t take this personal but I think i’m just going to head off to bed early tonight”. No big deal, we’d hang up the phone and what do you know, a text comes through moments later “whats wrong, did I do something, you seem distant” DISTANT, there is that lovely word again! I then have to call him back and explain to him that no it has nothing to do with him, as I had previously stated it was a bad day, work isn’t going so hot lately and I’d just like some sleep. Even after telling him all this I can sense that he is still worried.

This goes on for about a month, I keep telling him that nothing is wrong, I’m not being distant, blah blah blah. I joke with my friends about it at first but then I can tell that I am hardly even bringing him up to them at all anymore. My friends and I aren’t the type to not discuss the guys we are dating, not in bad ways they just usually don’t come up, so if they don’t at all anymore, not a good sign boys!Then the shit really started to hit the “distant” fan. I suffer from migraines in the worst way!

One day while I am, of course, up visiting him we spend the ENTIRE day at some store waiting around for one of his friends to show up so they can buy a flat screen TV. At no point during this al day event do I complain, I just go with the flow and figure oh well at least we’re out of the house. Finally they get the TV and we go to dinner, I am starving at this point. I have now gone from slight headache to full blown migraine, this is not good. I try to get some food down in hopes that I can avoid getting really sick. We eat dinner and head home. The drive back to his house is at least an hour. I can feel my migraine getting worse and worse. Then being in the car makes my stomach feel upset. Next thing I know I’m having him pull over the car, it’s pouring rain and I’m throwing up. I get back in the car and you can tell he feels bad because I’m not feeling well and now soaking wet. I think to myself that he is being really sweet about the fact that I’m sick so maybe things aren’t going to turn out so bad with him.

We finally get home after having to stop a couple more times. My head is just pounding at this point so I just go inside change into some comfy clothes and get into bed. The only thing that is making this migraine go anywhere is sleep and some solid sleep at that.He lets me just sleep for a while which is all I want. The next morning I wake up and I’m feeling better but still not 100%. He is next to me and I don’t even remember when he got into bed. I’m sort of just laying there thinking how I’m almost afraid to move because anything can trigger the migraine to come back and I can’t even imagine that happening. Then without any warning I hear “what’s the matter, you seem distant this morning” I CANNOT EVEN BELIEVE HE IS PULLING THAT B.S. WITH ME OUT OF ALL MORNINGS. I turn to him and try to explain that if he had forgotten so quickly the night before I was throwing up and barely able to even keep my eyes open my head hurt so bad. I apologized that in the midst of all that was my misery I wasn’t jumping all over him or reassuring him that I like him still. I am so shocked that out of all the times he tries to pull his insecure crap he decides that right then would be a good time.

We get into a little argument but it doesn’t last long. I am probably the worst arguer ever, I just don’t see the point and tend to just try and resolve things quick rather than let it get out of hand. We don’t see each other for a couple weekends and I have this mixed feeling about it. I miss him but at the same time feel as though I can sense that this is all coming to an end. It was strange though because we had the connection of mutual friends. It was almost like if I break up with him I have to explain myself to them. He comes to visit me and right when he gets there it’s like someone punches me right in the gut and says you know this is WRONG!!! We decide to go to the movies, a comedy. We are watching the movie and he keeps tapping my shoulder or knee and asking for a kiss. I’ll admit that I can be a somewhat cold once I have made a decision because I know there is no going back, the choice has been made, that’s that. FINAL! Then, out of nowhere in the middle of the movie, may I remind you, a comedy, not something sappy or sad, a comedy. He leans down and puts his head on my shoulder. For some reason this small little act made me scream in my head. It was as if every thought after that one little act was “BREAK UP WITH HIM” After the movie was out it was awful, every word that came out of his mouth got on my nerves. We got back to my apartment and were just hanging around doing nothing and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting to scream. HE WAS SOOOOO ANNOYING!! I went out into the living room at one point and even said to my roommate how I couldn’t take it! It had to be done. So I went back into the bedroom and did what really should have been done that very first time I heard the word “distant”.

He wasn’t very happy and ended up leaving that night even after I told him to at least stay and drive back in the morning. It was hard because he kept saying see I knew it all those times I thought you were acting weird it’s because you were. NOOOO YOU IDIOT, those times there was nothing wrong but now your stupid constant question has made something wrong! NOW I REALLY AM BEING DISTANT! He didn’t take it well. He tried with great effort to keep communication with me. I did feel bad for the poor guy but it was all too much. I can’t be reassuring my boy friend at all times that I like him, it should be natural. It’s a little time after Christmas and I think he’s doing ok now. I do hope he finds a girl that he won’t feel so inclined to question his girlfriend at any chance he can get!

I’ve always been attracted to the funny ones.

I met him backstage at a popular sitcom. He poked his head inside the dressing room. “Hey youse guys,” he said. Wow, I thought. It takes a certain kind of guy to pull off that phrase. And he did. Perfectly.

He asked me out instantly – in front of everyone – mostly for entertainment value. I don’t know if I was embarrassed or flattered, but I knew I was intrigued. And when I learned he was a stand-up comic – my heart beat like a bunny’s. He was funny and brave. I always admire people who do what I’m too scared to try.

Our first date was a collision of two worlds. I was raised in tract housing in Huntington Beach. At that time, the people were as homogeneous as the houses. He was a Guido from Queens. He said bada boom, bada bing – and not in the ironic way.

I had been a sorority girl at UCLA. He had dropped out of high school.

We were both full of so many questions. I asked him if he had any siblings. He asked me what the word siblings meant.

I was raised by a woman for whom correct grammar was the measure of one’s worth in the world. If I said, “snuck” instead of “sneaked”, my mom’s face would contort in the same horrified way that I imagine Mrs. Kaczynski’s did when she found out her little Teddy was the unibomber.

He didn’t care nothin’ ‘bout no grammar and mangled most words with more than two syllables. He would say “nonnegotionable” and “comeraderdie”. And for some reason – those two words seemed to come up a lot. A lot.

He also spoke of bustin’ people’s balls. Wow. Queens talk was so much more colorful than Orange County talk. I was completely and utterly enamored.

The first time I saw him on stage was exhilarating. He was on the main stage at The Comedy Store and people were laughing. Really laughing. He killed with his bit about his mom’s old-fashioned sanitary napkins being so big that they used them as cots for over-night guests.

I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but he blew me away. He was kicking ass at something that I thought was one of the scariest ventures on earth - standing in front of a room full of strangers and trying to make them laugh. I couldn’t have been more captivated.

At some point, I completely let go of my own life. When friends and family would call and ask how I was doing, it was always, “He got a guest shot on a sitcom. He got a blurb in USA Today. He was on Entertainment Tonight.” I knew I was trying to live his life. But I didn’t care. His life was much more exciting than mine.

I never missed a taping of a sitcom on which he guest starred. I accompanied him to celebrity golf tournaments. We flew in friends’ private jets and cheered from the pits at Indy races. But when it was just us, we couldn’t have lived more simply.

He lived in a furnished studio apartment at an Oakwood complex and firmly believed he was living the dream. We were regulars at Sizzler, and it was the first time he returned from the salad bar balancing a shamefully high pile of kidney beans smothered in ranch dressing that I realized I was in love. I absolutely unabashedly adored this man.

I was already in too deep when I realized he was a full-on spotlight whore. Not just on stage, but everywhere. There wasn’t enough attention in the world for him. I gave him everything I had, but his constant need for adulation far exceeded his need for me.

All I ever heard was, “He’s so funny; you’re so lucky.” All I could do was smile. Little did they know they were the lucky ones. They got only his funny, entertaining side. They didn’t wake up with a deeply depressed and abusive boyfriend. The happier and funnier he was the night before – the deeper his plunge into darkness the next day.

I stopped working so I could follow him across the country. I’d seen how women reacted to celebrity comics. They would throw themselves at Quasimodo if he had a solid six-minute set.

After a couple years, our relationship devolved into my traveling with him to his out-of-state gigs just to ensure he wouldn’t cheat on me. I would sit and watch his same 50-minute act. After the show, I would sit across from him and gorge on crappy diner food into the wee hours of the morning. Then I would sleep the next day away and not want to face the world. At last, I was truly living his life.

My friends were bothered that he had no idea I was funny. But I don’t think he really knew me at all. I had forfeited my personality to make room for his. It was massive and had no boundaries. Thus, it was a case of simple physics. There was no room for anything or anyone else. His personality was infinite and we existed in a finite space. As his ego expanded, I morphed from a funny girl to a quiet wallflower to a virtual mute.

And just when I thought I’d never escape, it happened. We were on the phone. When he took a breath, I pounced on my chance to speak. I merely mentioned that it was my birthday. His response was, “Oh, it’s all about you, isn’t it?”

That punch line was the show-closer. I decided it should be all about me and taking my life back - my boring, quiet, uneventful life. And I wasn’t just bustin’ his balls - our break-up was nonnegotionable.

Pierced nipples were the last straw. The mere suggestion ended a four-year tug-of-war with my college boyfriend, Ben, and finally left our relationship wheezing in the dirt.

Just to be clear from the onset, Ben’s nipples weren’t the pierced culprits. The simple aesthetics of that situation would have made the messy affair much easier to discard. And, while I may have made some ill-advised hair color decisions in my time—from aspirational Jean Harlow platinum to Archie Comic orange—the pierced nipples weren’t mine either.

And yet pierced nipples did us in.

The offending incident occurred in 2000, when pierced nipples had actually lost their edge, giving way to Marilyn Monroe-style beauty mark studs, bull-evoking septum pierces, stretched ear gauges and tattooed sleeves. But, perhaps poetically, the saga began five years earlier in 1995, in a hip hop and grunge-heavy era when pierced nipples were at their height, considered cool by a specific set (probably including Ben, who had a double-pierced tongue) along with adult rave pacifiers, plaid flannels, hoodlum baseball caps yanked sideways, bicycle chain chokers and paper clip scratches of “CURT” on fleshy teenage inner arms.

That year, I left my childhood nook on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. I waved goodbye to my eccentric art world parents, knishes and cranberry muffins from Fairway and friends from fifteen-year-old celebrity club promoters to first generation immigrant kids (who dealt pot in order to pay their parents’ rent). I landed in LA’s Inland Empire; without a driver’s license, without a friend, without a clue, without a gourmet food market in sight.

It was in the midst of this fog of culture shock that I met Ben, who spotted me that first week on line at a campus-wide BBQ. He was a west coast skater kid, tattooed with wild milky green eyes—a little psycho in effect, but compelling too—like staring into a translucent crystal ball that I clearly wasn’t intuitive enough to read. I was wearing a gray flannel Calvin Klein nightgown, trying to pull it off as a dress, but the smell of night jasmine (and “beer goggles” via several pints of Guinness) must have clouded his perspective, for in years to follow he spun a fairy tale version, claiming he’d first seen me as a vision: silver gown, aura of light, sparkling and skinny and young.

Ben’s magical nightgown tale offered me an elevated version of myself that I embraced in the way you might cling to a particularly flattering photo, though it somehow doesn’t resemble you. And, while it took him almost two years of inappropriate drunken outbursts and, at times, something close to stalking to coerce me into surrender, eventually—when neither of us could hold off another moment—he pulled me into a dark dorm common room and kissed me hesitantly against a decrepit yellow fridge. I was obliterated, lost to super nova strength infatuation, all glittery and wild particles of light. Suddenly, this entertaining, but odd little dude turned Technicolor. Especially in contrast to the cookie cutter houses, myriad candle and incense shops and Patagonia-clad students peppering the desert below Mount Baldy in Claremont, California, which all seemed so beige.

At that point, we were already kindred, so our time together—mostly spent scoffing at everything else—slowly magnified: we ogled kittens in pet store windows, drunkenly made out, built his celebrated little film projects. After graduation, we decided to play house in a little adobe enclave in the slums of Beverly Hills. And we nested happily for a while, until the realities of an adulthood for which he wasn’t quite prepared descended and shattered the magical nightgown into a billion scraps.

Countless red flags should have been earlier catalysts: The first time his enormous cat took a shit in my potted plant. When he insisted we keep that disgusting orange velour couch. When I told him I didn’t want the responsibility of a cat and he promptly bought me one. When he told me Camus’ The Stranger was his favorite book because he related to the main character. When I actually read The Stranger and realized that meant Ben might be a sociopath. (I’d watched enough Law & Order to know the downside of that particular affliction.)

When he told me he hated sushi. When he stopped working, but set up a cavernous walk-in closet—yes, closet—as his office in which to play role-playing computer games. When he started using a creepy vintage wheelchair at his desk, just for kicks. When he got a DUI on his way home from a strip club. When he threw down a bag of groceries on the floor and actually stomped his feet like a child having a tantrum. When his best friend came to stay in our one-bedroom apartment for a month and a half. When we came home to find that friend shirtless and shit-faced in the vintage wheelchair, watching Pavarotti on TV at an insane volume, with empty beer cans strewn everywhere.

When I came home at the end of the day to a pitch-dark apartment with only a crack of light streaming out of the “office.” When he told me to stop hovering, when I came to say hello. When he demanded to know why we always had to have dinner together. When he began eating only sourdough bread. When our next-door neighbor pretended to invite me over for a glass of wine, but actually wanted to express concern because she overheard our profane shouting matches. When I started huddling in my own closet for alone time.

When he started staying up until 4am to play his computer games. When, during a dish session, my friend Carlos meekly asked, “Does a small part of you wish he was addicted to something a little bit cooler than video games?” When I answered “Yes,” and we burst into hysterical laughter.

When Ben dragged me to Dublin’s, the world’s cheesy bar, where a strange older man assured me that I was young and there would be many other boyfriends in my future. When I told him I didn’t want other boyfriends. When I declined to go home with Ben for the holidays because last time he made me feel discarded. When he called me and admitted to kissing another girl on Christmas Eve. When I felt crushed, but deeply relieved. When he told me he wanted to move out, but stay together and I was disappointed that we weren’t breaking up. When his parents told him he was making a mistake. When he asked me to help him apartment hunt and was indignant when I said no.

When I smelled his bachelor pad. When I fell in love with my own sweet little studio apartment with crown moldings and green tea colored walls and nearly died of happiness over having my own refrigerator, stocked with pickles and Dijon mustard. When I started taking morning jogs past beautiful turret-topped stone buildings on Fountain and working out to Tae-bo on tape. When I began a new job with a bunch of loveable metal head and indie boys, who were kind and goofy and made me smile. When he showed up drunk on my doorstep and ranted and raved about my “new friends.” When he told me he’d like to see me less often—maybe twice a week?

But it wasn’t until the pierced nipples that I officially closed the door. At that point, our relationship barely existed. Still, I’ve never been good at letting things go. I practically eulogize old socks. I guess I keep imagining they’ll return to their old glory again, even with all those irreparable holes. I still love them for what they were.

One day, on some ruse, I stopped by his place and we had sex against that old ugly orange velour couch. Attraction doesn’t die in the same way as do respect and affection. And, as I was dressing to leave, he asked me to hurry.

“Why?” I wondered aloud.

“I promised this girl Erica I’d take her to get her nipples pierced,” he grinned. “ I don’t want to keep her waiting.”

So, this was rock bottom. Not that scenic. It looked a lot like Ben’s disgusting living room. And, in that moment, beside a kitchen counter littered with rank dirty cat food cans, it all came to a crashing halt.

That was it. I was done. That day, I officially put that magical nightgown to bed.

And I have pierced nipples to thank.

We had been together for more than 6 years. I had a diamond ring on my left hand and a pit in my stomach. We had been through so much… how could I leave him now? He’s done so much for me. And he’ll take care of me. He won’t leave me like my dad left my mom for the SEXertary. I found a faithful one. I’m going to keep him. I’ll make it work and figure out how to deal with our issues later. After all, I’m sure this is just the pre-wedding jitters. Right? My wedding planner had already maped out everything for me. I thought I was just a low-key bride. I didn’t really have opinions on much, just an open bar and a live band. “Tell me when and where and I’ll show up,” was my motto. My mom wanted to get me more invloved so she took me to a bridal show. I walked in and some gitty young girl flung a camera at me and squeeled, “will you take a picture of my mom and I?” I almost puked at I snapped the shot. As we walked deeper into the show, I felt very out of place. I wasn’t like THEM - Those annoying woman fluttering around decadent cakes and lusting over flower arrangements and ornate dresses. I felt a surge of anger, resentment and panic take over. I shot my mom a look of disgust and said, “I have to get out of here, NOW! I saw a bar downstairs… We need to talk.”Over a manhattan and a basket of french fries, I told my mom, “I don’t want to get married.” We both cried. I vented about stuff I had surpressed for years. After my second martini, I felt better. Then as these two women at a nearby table got up to leave, one stopped at our table on the way out. “I really didn’t mean to evesdrop, but I just can’t bite my tongue,” she said in a kind voice. “I just want to tell you that you’re so smart to listen to your gut instinct. I wish I would have been able to do that at your age. Be strong. It will get better.” I felt a rush of relief flow over me. I was free. Now I just had to figure out how to break the news to him and our friends and family.

My mother said, “What a great boyfriend, to have stood by you in this difficult time.” My father had passed away suddenly (a massive heart attack on the tennis court) and my boyfriend came over. He stayed until the funeral, never leaving my side. What my mom didn’t know was, in actuality, he had the flu, and didn’t have anyone to take care of him, so he inserted himself into my grief so that I could. I remember laying in the bed crying, him holding me and coughing into my hair, then asking if I could fix him some tea. . . As if that wasn’t enough, a week after my father was in the ground and he was feeling better, he told me that i was “a lot of drama” because my father had died, and he just didn’t have time for “that type of drama.” A light went off at that moment, I excused myself from the conversation, and I was retrieving my things from his place a week later.

Here is my tale of the moment that I knew my last relationship was over…After a few bad dating experiences and being single for about two years, my friends urged me to try internet dating. I was a bit reluctant, but figured that many people have found love on dating sites…why couldn’t I? So I posted a profile on a free dating site and waited.I received a plethora of messages, winks, and other forms of contact, but no one really caught my eye.

On night while I was watching the Red Sox, I decided to surf some profiles myself and reach out to a guy that I came across. He looked perfect– he was tall, had a great smile, was athletic, seemed to have good morals, was well written in his profile, lived about 40 minutes from me, and even was a native of the state that I went to college! I sent him a quick note and was surprised when he messaged me back the next day.We chatted on this website for a few days before setting up a date on St. Patrick’s Day. We both had previous plans so it was decided that this would be a quick drink just to finally meet each other. I was nervous as I dressed and got ready to meet who I hoped would at least become a new friend.When I got to the restuarant and saw him waiting by the door, I was floored. He was even better looking in person! His baby blue eyes were piercing, and his warm smile was so cute! He was polite, complimentary, and interesting. After two drinks and an hour later, we parted with a kiss on the cheek and promises to call each other.When he texted me later that night to tell me what a great time he had and that he couldn’t wait to see me again, my heart skipped a beat.

For the next week, we talked on the phone and texted each other often. He was away for business, so our second date was not until a week after our intial meeting. We went to a basketball game and had dinner, and the sparks were flying.This guy was too good to be true! He was so charming, had his act together, treated me as if I was a princess, and was strikingly handsome. For the next few weeks, we saw each other on a regular basis and got to know each other…or so I thought.As time went on, I was falling for this guy. He took me on fun and unique dates such as ice skating on a frozen pond and watching planes take off from a local airport while sipping wine and talking about our dreams and aspirations.He made an effort to meet and get along with my frinds, and even introduced me to several of his closest pals. He took me on weekend trips and to his basketball games (he played for a local league). He came to my parent’s house for a family cook out and surprised me at my sister’s high school graduation party. He even shook my father’s hand and told him that he was falling for his daughter.But something wasn’t right…he was a bit fishy at times.

After the first two or three months, he was constantly cancelling our dates for work related outings, sick grandparents, and sudden out of town basketball tournaments. I wasn’t bothered at the beginning. After all, he was a successful and busy man, and I would never want to get in the way of his career and other aspects of his life.I was severely disappointed on my birthday. I had asked him for weeks to try and get out of a weekend basketball tournament so that he could spend my birthday with me. He told me that he would try his best, and the week of my birthday, told me that he was almost positive that he would be around for my special day.

However, on the day before my birthday, he called to tell me that his replacement teammate’s wife had gone into labor, so that he had to travel with the team that weekend. I was heart broken. We had been dating for almost three months, and I had never asked him to give up anything to spend time with me. But my birthday was supposed to be special! So needless to say…no card, no present, no boyfriend.I tried to act as if it didn’t bother me when he returned home that Monday. I then asked him to accompany me to a celebrity basketball game a few weeks later. My mother had paid a lot of money to get me these tickets, because she knew my boyfriend was a basketball nut. He promised me that he would take the night off and come with me.A few weeks and more cancelled dates passed. It got to the point where we were barely seeing each other once a week.

The morning of the basketball game, I get a text message from him saying that he is stuck in Washington DC at an important meeting and won’t make it home. Disappointed again. I asked a friend to take his ticket for that night and had fun, but it wasn’t the same.He constantly told me that he would make these things up to me, but never did. I grinned and bared it, because when we were together, he was so great to me. “Just suck it up Amy…he’s busy. You have such a wonderful time when you are together, why throw that away because he has to cancel every once in a while?” is what I told myself.I was falling in love with this guy and he told me that the feelings were mutual.

At our three month point, I asked him why I had never been to his house. A flood of excuses spilled from his mouth…”I have a roommate who is a born again Christian and wouldn’t approve of me having my girlfriend sleep over”, “There are some out of town family members staying with me”, and “I don’t even like being home, so I figured you wouldn’t want to go hang out there”. I expressed to him that I thought this was a bit odd, and he promised to take me to his house on our next date. He even told me that he was thinking of buying a new place and that he wanted me to move in with him. I was pumped!

The following week, his grandfather got very sick and was hospitalized…I think. He told me this was why he couldn’t see me for a few weeks. He was constantly at the hospital or caring for his grief stricked grandmother. I stayed by his side as he flew back and forth to Philadelphia to help his family.During this time, my friends and family members started asking me questions. “Well Amy, are you SURE he’s not married?” “There’s always an excuse for everything”, and “Who is he…Austin Powers, the International Man of Mystery? Amy, he’s a nice guy but we think he is hiding something from you”. I was angry at them for thinking that the man who told me every day that he was in love with me and didn’t want anyone else would be lying or manipulating me. I brushed their comments aside.

As the summer went on, I saw him less and less. I loved him, and wanted to be with him so much, but didn’t know how much more I could take. Everytime he cancelled on me, chose something unimportant over spending time with me, or ditched me, a piece of my heart broke off. I’m not a needy girlfriend…I don’t demand presents, push to meet my family, or start moving into to an apartment without permission. All I wanted was his time…and I wasn’t getting that.He told me that Labor Day weekend would be better. He had planned a beach weekend just for the two of us. We were going to spend three days sunning, sanding, and being together. I was ecstatic! I was going to forget ball of the times he had hurt me over the summer because he was going to make up for it now. I packed my bags and took Friday off from work.

On Friday morning, my phone rang and my stomach tensed. Sure enough, we would have to wait until tomorrow because of something with his grandmother. But he promised that would could still go for one night, and although I was upset, I bit my tongue.On Saturday, I woke up and waited for him to call. As the hours passed, I started thinking the worst. Is he ok? Is his grandmother sick? By the time the sun set and and I still hadn’t heard from him, I broke down crying. Yet again he let me down.I texted and called him three times over the next few days and I heard nothing. Being the good girlfriend that I was, I was worried sick over him and tried to find another way to contact him. In the six months that we had been dating, he had never gone days without calling me. So I logged online and “Googled him, hoping to find his home phone number or work email…some way to reach him.

What I found made me gasp out loud. I was shaking as I read that he had been lying to me about almost everything he had told me for six months. His last name, where his parents live, where he went to high school, what college he attended, his address…all of it was lies. No wonder I had never been to his house! No wonder I had never met his parents or grandparents!I couldn’t believe my eyes. At first, I told myself that I was mistaken. But when his cell phone number and business came up listed to this other name, I knew he was a liar.

That’s when the light bulb went off and I had my moment of “What was I thinking?!?” I had believed everything this man told me because I had no other reason not to. I had forgiven his cancellations and stood by him through hard times with his family. And now it was all over.He finally decided to call me on Wednesday to tell me his sob story, but I had had enough. He claimed that he had been with his sick granmother and that she was hospitalized. I didn’t let on about my new found information, and expressed my condolences. I asked him what hospital she was in so that I could send her some flowers. He reluctantly told me, and I smiled inside.

After we hung up, I called the very hospital that he claimed to be at visiting his sick grandmother, and true to my suspicions, there was no patient listed with her name. Wow…he was so sick to even go as far as to concoct a story about a sick grandparent to pacify me and blame for our once again cancelled trip. He didn’t know it yet, but we were DONE.The next day, I called my two best friends and told them. They were somewhat shocked, but knew he was shady the whole time. I wish I had listened to them in the beginning! We all got together and I logged online to show them what I had found. Through my searches with them, I came across more. I found profiles listed on sex websites where he had listed that he was SINGLE and looking to meet up with women for one night stands and threesomes! My blood was boiling and any feelings I had for this man quickly dissolved.

Later that night, I called and confronted him about the information I had found. He told me that I was mistaken, and that he was often confused with this man. I wasn’t buying it! I had proof and had even printed it out to present to him if he questioned me. He blamed the profiles on adult sites to pranks that his friends had played on him, and starting guilting me for investigating him on the internet. I explained to him that I was looking for another way to get in touch with him because I worried about his well being, and told him that I couldn’t continue to date someone that I didn’t trust or didn’t really know to begin with! He never fessed up to his lies or fabricated stories, so we ended it right then, on our sixth month anniversary.Although I was upset and hurt for weeks to come, I was thankful. I was dating a man with a double life, and so grateful to have had my “What was I thinking?” moment before it was too late.

His name was Jon. And he looked like John Boy from the Walton’s.  Our first date was a walk in my neighborhood in Mill Valley Ca. It was a beautiful day, everything smelled alive and his stringy blonde hair looked like that of a 7 year old. I was jealous because my hair was pool worn and straight iron worn. I also didn’t know if Jon could win me over with his masculinity, he looked so…well, John Boyish. I decided as we walked…why not test him out a bit?

It was the late nineties. I was in the most confident time of my life as a woman; lot of flirting, lots of floundering and not caring. So, I said to him, “It’s sad really…” he looked at me curiously.“Well, how boys are taught the 1, 2, 3 method of seduction with a girl. When they grow into men they usually keep it up.”“Oh, pleez…tell me more, this ought to be good” he chortled at me.“

1. Get close enough to the girl to hold her hand. 

2. If you get that close, take it a step further and put your arm around her. If you’re lucky she won’t notice, but you still accomplished something. 

3. Go for the kiss. Get your tongue in there or she’ll think you’re gay.”

He laughed and did exactly what I wanted I him to, he kissed me. “3.” He said while pulling me to him in such a forceful, sexy way that even John Boy Walton would’ve taken notes.It was good. Good enough for me to accept a date with him two nights later. He took me to a raw foods restaurant in San Francisco. The waiter seated us on cushions on the floor near the window. Everything was cold. The food, the floor, even the waiter looked skinny, cold and his skin seemed vampire-ish. It gave raw food new meaning to think of the waiter as a vampire. But Jon was a major vegan. He couldn’t even smell meat without wanting to puke. I didn’t know this previously. But as it turned out, I didn’t know Jack about Jon. In fact, if Jon’s name were Jack I wouldn’t have been surprised by the end of this night.

By the time the Licorice tea came I was craving a Martini in a big way. Jon was talking in a prideful way about the mother of his child, his ex-wife. How he left her when she was pregnant with his son because he realized her body type was never something he liked. He scratched his crotch a lot as he told this story. To this day I don’t know why–guilty crotch syndrome maybe. Anyway, he moved to another state and got a skinny girlfriend. I asked him to describe his ex-wife’s body type. “Voluptuous, athletic.” He said as he slurped the seaweed into his mouth. “But that’s me, that’s my body type.” I said incredulous. “Yeah, you aren’t my body type either.” “Are you wacked?” I said eyeing the skinny waiter at this point because he was starting to look really good to me.Jon laughed and kept eating. 

He was pleased with himself for some odd reason. We were quiet for what seemed like an hour, as we ate. The sounds of cars passing got louder. I felt colder. I wanted to go home. But Jon had more to say. The night morphed into something more like a circus act of the soul—something darkly amusing and creepy at the same time. He smiled and pulled his stringy hair to the side. He eyed my cleavage. “My current girlfriend runs a whorehouse in Mill Valley.” He said casually. I stared blankly at the floor and realized we were the only ones in this restaurant. He wanted to eat at 6 p.m., which I thought was pretty early. “You may know her…” I put my hand up in his face to stop. “You know, I have this essay to write on hobo language for this design project…” I trailed off. The waiter came by. “Check please.” And he looked at me pitifully. 

I wondered how many women Jon had brought here. Not that I cared all that much at this point. I wished a cab home didn’t cost a hundred dollars; that I was rich enough not to care. But this wasn’t the case.As I closed the passenger’s side of his funky white van, he said “I’m sorry, I’m so ashamed of the male conditioning I carry in my being. I try to cleanse. I eat…”“Raw food” I interjected. “Well. I eat well, I try to learn and grow…” “I was just wondering if you could start the van. I really need to go home.” I said anxiously. But he didn’t. He talked for 10 minutes straight about this issue and that issue and all the issues with him and his whorehouse 1099 woman. What a consulting gig, I thought sullenly. Finally, I said, “I’m just into you, I’m not interested. Please take me home.” He laughed. He looked at me stunned. He said, “Now that! I just don’t believe you. When I look in the mirror, I want to DO me.” 

I went to my happy place at this point. I needed to calm down before I gave opened my mouth again. I needed to be effective. I thought about my bed, my own bed, how good it would be to get in it ALONE. I gave him a long, thorough look. “Then, THAT’S all you need! Now take me home.” I demanded. This time I maintained eye contact until he relented. I hoped he got the message I would kick his skinny little ass if he didn’t step on it. He did.In the morning I cuddled with my white coyote dog. I opened my bedroom window to hear the sounds of the creek going by I called my best girlfriend and told her the story over morning coffee. We laughed really hard. What was I thinking? Clearly I wasn’t thinking at all. I would like to say that the next time I did. That I did think. But no, I have more stories for you.

Most women I know have had one of those moments when it’s all over with the guy we’re seeing.  Well, at least when we’re being totally honest. That moment when everything you felt for the person lying in bed next to you vanishes in one instant, as if it had never existed. My most recent experience with this phenomenon was with The Politician. I call him that because he once ran for office in his home state. I’m thinking he didn’t win, but I can’t remember for sure. But he did tell me he ran, and I Googled him, and there he was, his name and a picture.  From that point on he was, simply, The Politician. He was a Republican, that much I knew. He also told me, within just a few minutes of meeting, that he wasn’t into kids or dogs. I have both, and I’m a Democrat, but those minor demographics immediately faded. I was blinded by the physical attraction we had for each other, the dizziness I felt in his presence. All the other stuff didn’t matter. What mattered was the way he smelled, his hand on my lower back, his blue eyes.I need to back up, because it sounds like I picked up some stranger in a bar, and while maybe it’s happened at some point in my life, it’s not really the whole truth here. He did walk up to me, and it was in a bar, and I’d never met him before.  But I’d met his friend, Purse Man, so I felt like I sort of knew him.

Purse Man I’d met a month or two earlier when I was playing pool with a couple of my married mom friends who needed a girls’ night out.  Who better than me, the single mom, to use as an excuse to get out and ply up on margaritas? It seems I’m always that person for married women. I bring something out in certain types, and I end up feeling like a terrible influence because they go wild and get very intimate and vomit out stuff about their lives.  Then their husbands sense that I’m some kind of threat, like their wives are going to want to go out every night, and then their families will fall apart, and it’s all my fault. I tell my married friends who might have an itch or may be complacent and slightly bored, that they truly wouldn’t want my life. Being single, this age, and a mom — it’s just not that easy and certainly not that fun. I should have that house, the one that looks like the 2nd floor of the Ralph Lauren store.  And I should have a man that looks like the man on the 1st floor of the Ralph Lauren store but is also the perfect step-dad to my son (with season tickets to the Lakers) and is kind and understanding and funny and loves me.I shouldn’t be playing pool on a Friday night because that’s what I do on Friday nights; I should be playing pool on Friday nights like they are playing pool – because it’s that once-every-few-months night out with the girls.  Their great husbands are at home putting the kids to bed and waiting for them to come home. That seems so normal yet so unbelievably impossible to achieve. Even when I had it, I didn’t have it. I had some fake play-acting version of that, two people trying to be grown-ups who didn’t understand the life or each other. Ick. Yuck. Sad. Don’t want to go back to that.  But I digress.Back to Purse Man:  My friends and I are playing pool, and in walks this super tall guy carrying a helmet, a purse and wearing (egad) designer jeans. I don’t know why, but that’s kind of a thing for me. I don’t like guys in designer jeans or any of that post-1999 nouveau denim. I’m a little strict about it – Levis or Diesel, for men. That’s it. Period.  That’s probably a little shallow, though I will allow for Wranglers on a cowboy, a real cowboy like Jewel’s boyfriend who rides bulls or my friend Barry who used to wrangle horses. But designer jeans?  No.I take back what I just said. Gay men are allowed to wear whatever kind of jeans they want – studs on the pockets, chains dangling from the belt loops, swirly patterns as accent. That’s fine. They’re gay. But a straight guy trying to get my attention? Again, it’s Levis or Diesel, or if you’re a cowboy, Wranglers. Done. Just one of my quirks, but admittedly a big one.So Purse Man’s got the jeans with the jeweled bird or whatever on his pockets, and he’s carrying the purse and the helmet, and he’s totally focused on me. From the moment he walks into the room, it’s as if he’s decided I am his. If it had been a movie, he would have been a real biker and I would have been like Cher in Mask and it would have worked out. But it isn’t a movie, he certainly isn’t a real biker, and I just want to play pool with my friends. His looking at me is annoying me.  

Sadly, when I ignore men like that it fuels their desire, so of course he approaches me. I’m sitting waiting for my next shot, and he comes up and sits next to me and asks me to watch his purse while he goes to the bathroom. This was out of line. I was in the middle of a game, I didn’t know him, and now I’m responsible for his man purse and brand spanking new helmet? I don’t like it, and I tell him so. This seems to charm him even more, which makes me dislike him even more.  Oblivious, he laughs and leaves his purse with me. If I were really an asshole, I’d have hidden it somewhere and let him think it was stolen.  But I’m a straight shooter and I don’t like to lie or make people feel bad. So Purse Man returns from the bathroom, my having delivered on watching his stuff to the detriment of my pool game. Now I have a resentment, an unwanted suitor, and a bad pool game. I decide to gather my friends and leave. They of course have husbands and a warm house to get home to. I have some leftover wine and a DVD of “The Wire” – both more appealing than a lonely, bejeweled guy in a dive bar on a Friday night.Back to The Politician: There I was, two months later at sushi happy hour at my neighborhood place in Venice. My friend Denise had cancelled just as I was leaving the house, and since it was my weekend night out, my big Friday night, I of course couldn’t bear to stay home. I’m two personalities that way, and I needed my single, still-warm-if-not-hot, hanging-onto-the-last-vestiges-of-fun, cool girl while I could get it — which, by my estimation, wasn’t going to be much longer. During the week, I am Mom; I help with homework, run to sports practices and doctor’s appointments, cook dinner, make lunchbox contents, do the laundry, and watch American Idol on Tuesdays with my son. That’s who I am. Most days. But that person evaporates on Friday evening and re-materializes on Sunday afternoon.  In between, out comes a vivacious adult. Or, at least, that’s what I’d like to believe. I can honestly say I was a vivacious younger adult, but I took all that energy and applied it to the wrong places, which is what has led me to where I am, wondering if I’m an older vivacious adult.I don’t mind sitting at a sushi bar and eating alone. 

Actually, I kind of like it. This night, I just wanted to have some sake and sushi and go home early. But then this good-looking guy walked in and my night was over. He didn’t know my night was over, but I did. He was wearing khakis, and the blue oxford matched the eyes that were already brought out by his silver hair. None of this is what I’m ordinarily drawn to, but there was an electric connection. He saw me too but joined his friends, and when I took a closer look at his group, I saw – can it be — Purse Man. I tried to hide, but it was too late. Purse Man whispered to The Politician, and the next thing I knew, The Politician was standing next to me. My body was certainly happy to feel him near, but I was onto the fact that his friend, his cowardly friend, his stupid friend had sent him over. Given the effect of Purse Man, I gave The Politician what I consider to be my stony demeanor, though it probably wasn’t. He tried to talk, and I did my best to be indifferent – as indifferent as I could when my hormones were screeching and I could feel myself wanting to fall off the bar stool into his arms. He seemed to know this, because he brushed his arm against mine; I inhaled lightly and we exchanged looks. It was established. The problem of course was Purse Man, because as I’d suspected those months ago, Purse Man somehow thought I was his girl. It didn’t matter that I’d all but been mean to him, never told him my name, hadn’t seen him since. Nope, I was the girl in his fantasy and now here I was, across the room from him with his friend’s hand brushing against mine and sending crazy thoughts to my head. Not only was I hot for the Politician, I was annoyed by Purse Man’s declaration of ownership. Well, maybe not “ownership” per se, but it was that feeling. The Politician told me — before we even made it back to their group, before we’d really said more than a few words to each other, before we’d even kissed — that we were in trouble. Naturally, that turned me on. It turned me on that this guy I knew I needed the minute he walked in the door was feeling the same thing I was, and now there was a little mess we had to take care of. The mess part I could have done without, but it was pretty hot that we had a mess as a result of this…this…crazy passion.I’m not young but this is exactly how I acted when I was young. And, by the way, every time it happens, I tell myself that I’ve never gone through this before, this is different, something new. Maybe not “love”, but a “connection”. It’s such bullshit in broad daylight, but I believe myself every time. Every single time. And in the midst of it, probably as if an interventionist were trying to stop a gambler from throwing the dice, there is nothing anyone can say to me to remind me of the past, that this isn’t the first time, that really their names and faces change but they’re all the same guy. I won’t hear it, not between Friday evening and Sunday morning. By now it was obvious to most people around us that there was something going on, and even Purse Man sensed it and stormed out of the restaurant. It upset The Politician, but not enough to stop himself from kissing me that night, or calling me the next day, or seeing me the following evening. No, sometimes physical chemistry outweighs a guy’s stupid friend and his stupid fantasy. And sometimes physical chemistry outweighs a girl’s better judgment (duh). I found myself the following night, after all the ceremonial pretenses of a “date”, bringing The Politician home with me. This man who’d already told me he wanted nothing to do with kids or dogs (though he managed to eke out in conversation that for me, he’d probably do anything), this man who was a…a…Republican, who’d voted for George W. Bush — all of that was shoved to the back of my mind because he made me weak in the knees. I didn’t want to think; in my head was ringing “la-la-la-la-la” so I wouldn’t hear all the warning signals.  I wanted to respond to my physical needs because I just hadn’t done that in so long.So that’s exactly what I did. That first night was a blur of need and desire and craving and collapsing into oblivion. The following days brought some guilt, because he’s Catholic, and he had left some short-term girlfriend (”girlfriend”? at his age?) behind in his home state, and he hadn’t “quite” broken up with her. I wasn’t much interested in the specifics. I knew he wasn’t my future, but when the day came that we had bike-riding plans and I didn’t hear from him, I was hurt. Rather, my ego was hurt. When I tried to call him and his number had changed, I was outraged. I told all of my friends that this guy had changed his number to avoid me (it actually is all about me), and I came to believe it. It became my “story”; and after awhile, it was a funny story, a great anecdote to tell at parties. My ego isn’t so terribly huge or unhealthy that I dwelled on this faux rejection, so I went on and soon enough forgot about The Politician. I admit, there was a lingering question — confusion as to why a man his age just wouldn’t be able to tell me that he couldn’t be involved any further. After all, I’m not exactly the stalker type.  But whatever; I let go. And then came the night I ran into him again. A friend was visiting from Austin, and we went out for sushi. 

When I walked into the same restaurant where I’d first met him, there was The Politician sitting at the bar. Not only was he not appalled at seeing me, he immediately approached and was hugging me and kissing my neck. It had been nearly four months since we’d seen each other, and by the feel of it, nothing had changed for him. He tripped all over himself to let me know that he’d lost his phone the day after we’d last seen each other, and that was all I needed to hear to justify finishing dinner quickly, grabbing The Politician and heading back to my place.This time, though, the rose had lost some petals. Not all its petals, as I was still physically attracted to him. It’s just that I noticed certain things I hadn’t seen before. For instance, he was very tan. Now, I know people love to tan and I certainly did my share of it when I was a teenager, before I knew better. These days, I kind of see it like smoking without the cigarette. Also, it seems so…so…egocentric. Not that we don’t all act on ego occasionally. I mean, I’m guilty of that sometimes — I’m the one that thought a lost phone was about me; hell, I’m the one who even believed there was a lost phone. It’s just that there are some things that fit for me and some that don’t, and a man in his late 40s with a deep tan just doesn’t click. Also, and I’m sorry to admit this, his muscles were just…too big. Or, rather, they’d once been too big and now had that worked-out older guy thing going on. I may seem like the most rotten girl on the planet, but we all have our types. For some girls, this former body-builder would be the be-all to end all, and my skinny, preppy rock-and-roll East Coast guy would be repellant. But different strokes, and all that. Having said that, the chemistry was still there and I have an amazing capacity to deny my brain when I want something, so I welcomed him into my home. I also really loved hearing all of the things he said to me, such as, he’d thought about me every day since he lost his phone; he dreamed of me, missed me — all of those things that, had it been the right guy, I’d have married by now. Given that he wasn’t, it was still fun to hear, and that was all it took to end up in bed.But then it happened. That moment, the moment that ends it all, that makes one wonder what on earth she was thinking. The moment in which one questions her judgment, her motives, her life. The moment in which I ran my hand over his chest and discovered…stubble.  Stubble? He…shaved…his…chest. This was more than I could bear. My hand froze, but he was talking and while he was talking it also occurred to me that he’d never really talked to me, simply at me — which somehow connected the stubble to the Republican thing, the muscles, the tan, and all of it. I was simultaneously mortified and filled with guilt that I could be so shallow as to feel all this while lying naked next to this otherwise nice man.  (Although, if we’re counting, a global- warming denier and a war monger.) And so it happened: it was over.  There’s no way…ever…period. All in an instant.  And at last I’m totally done, now and forever, with the after-dark insanity of the way some guy smells, his hand on my back, his whatever-colored eyes.  I must have done or said something to turn him off (maybe he’s clairvoyant), because the ambiance noticeably cooled.  We both made it through the night, if painfully, and when dawn came, it was a race to see who could get to the door faster – him, or me walking him there. A perfunctory kiss, an “I’ll call you”, and he was gone.  And my walk on the wild side was over. For that weekend, anyway.

You might have thought I’d have bailed when his mom told him he had to pick between prom with me (first weekend in june) and the science fair (second weekend in june) and he picked the science fair. And I am sure I would have been forgiven for flinging my hot fudge sundae spoon in his face when he announced that, after thinking it over, he should date other women (at the age of 17) because he planned on marrying me, but it made good common sense for him to not marry the only woman he’d ever dated.  And I am sure we must have made a solid mis-match in the first place–him, a momma’s boy, a brainiac, focused on medical school since the 5th grade, and me–horny, with perfect gravity-free boobs and NOT afraid to use them, contemplating a life singing rock and roll surrounded by male groupies but still–there we were, somehow conjoined, to my parents’ eternal bliss and his parents’ complete dismay. But so many reasons for me to jettison this attempt at reformation in the form of an unsuspectedly hot body under so many pencil protectors–and yet I stayed. Until the piece de resistance, in the form of HIS resistance to my womanly wiles. Imagine if you will the step-down living room of his house, fortunately bereft of any parental presence. Also imagine my not-so-subtle pretense of “needing some help” with some ridiculously easy bit of homework. There we were–two heads together over one useless bit of math factoid. I make my excuses, step casually out of the room only to re-emerge a few minutes later buck naked, in all my hot-body horny high school need with my feet rubbing against the sky-blue shag carpeting. “ahhh perfect” I thought. THIS would be the scene of my deflowering of the boy….who looked up with dismay. And said “you know, I am trying to get my homework done, here”.

On Christmas Eve, I hurried into my boyfriend’s apartment to leave my gift for him — a handmade book about our adventures over the past year, with my illustrations — on his pillow. But there was already a note on the pillow, with the letter “C” — the initial of my first name — and I thought, “How sweet!” and opened it. It began, “Last night, when I felt your lips on my vagina…” Oh. It was a note for HIM. His name began with “C” also. I left the book anyway, got him my car, and drove 54 miles home, nerves jangling all the way.