I Am So Popular: The Things We Do For Love

Some exes give us a lifetime of material to work with. In my case, several exes have provided me with enough fodder to write, should I choose, a series of horror stories that could keep me busy for decades and swiftly put Stephen King out of business. This image that keeps coming to me epitomizes all of the times I lay down like a doormat and practically begged one man or another to wipe his filth all over me.

George the Second was a piece of work, all long hair and pierced eyebrow and Trekkie-speak and arrogance. He was the sort of guy who, whenever he pulled up in his overcompensatory little black car, any friends sitting on the porch with me would suddenly start making excuses to escape, rather than subject themselves to His Highness’s attitude. “Look at the time! Gotta run home and dip my ferret now. Buh-bye…”

G2 showed his manipulative hand early in the game. During our very first conversation, he revealed in grotesque detail the horrors of his childhood. It was a classic calling card, the sort of feigned cry for help delivered with the knowledge that such graphic tales could instantly jam the “Oh my god, that’s so horrible that I need to enslave myself to you and make up for all that you suffered” button in a girl like me. How sad his life had been! How hard I would work to make it all up to him!

By applause, how many of you have fallen for this sort of thing, and cast yourself in the role of rescuer? I’m not being gender specific here— it works both ways. But what is it about trauma in some other that acts as an aphrodisiac?

Anyway, the scene in my head accompanying those bad lyrics. G2 had announced that he was off to Chicago for a spell, which was thinly veiled codespeak for “And I’ll be fucking my ‘ex’ girlfriend while I’m there.” This wasn’t the first time he’d done this: go off, cheat, come back, cry, then give me some long story about how he was way more evolved than me and my desire for foolish monogamy and if only I could see that, we wouldn’t be having such a hard time. Why couldn’t I just get with the program and recognize the superiority of his fuck-whomever-whenever model?

Times he wasn’t planning vacations that included bedding down another, he liked to lie beside me and offer post-coital whisperings, telling me all about this other woman. How very small her waist was compared to mine. How very big her SAT scores were. The things she said about me and how she had no qualms about hopping in the sack with him, which, of course, infuriated me, as G2 knew it would. This played right into his fantasy of two women fighting over him—tres exciting!

I blame me, in case you’re wondering. I should’ve run the other direction instead of merely paying lip service to the idea, issuing as I did idle threats and ultimatums, and partaking in that model of “relationship” I once heard described as bicker-and-fuck, whereby I’d yell for awhile, then cry some, then get right back in bed with him, demonstrating I was the perfect cross between masochist and overachiever, convinced that if I just hung in their long enough mine would be the prize of…

Of what? Of this guy who, that particular day I went to tell him goodbye before he headed off on another jaunt (at least I had the good sense not to drive him to the airport) was preparing to fly to the arms of the other woman by meticulously scrubbing the dirt off his boots.

With my toothbrush.

That’s the sort of thing that, if I wrote it into a script or novel, would be edited out on the grounds that it was far too preposterous to allow for the audience’s suspension of disbelief. Scrubbing. His. Boots. With. My. Toothbrush.

Who would put up with that sort of thing?

G2 treated me so horribly that his presence in my life— and then absence when, at long last, after jumping up and down on his lawn and screaming at him what an asshole he was, I finally parted ways with him for good—prompted major changes in my life. Well, at least for a spell. Post-G2, I took a break from dating. For seven years. That’s right. During what some call the peak libidinous years for a woman, I stopped having sex. This unintentional celibacy wasn’t all that difficult. G2 served as the log that broke this already burdened-by-a-horrible-dating-past camel’s back right in half. I was the common denominator in all the bullshit. Thus the only cure was to remove myself from the situation entirely. Don’t date. Don’t get fucked over. Pretty simple.

Of course it wasn’t that simple and whatever lessons I thought I learned either didn’t actually occur or faded pretty fast once I got back into the game, immersing myself in yet another tangle with yet another narcissist. (Hint: Ladies, if he prefers banana hammock underpants, he’s probably a narcissist—this might be the biggest real lesson I’ve learned.) The things I did allegedly for love with that next guy could fill a few dozen more volumes on the topic of What Never to Do.

After that one, I didn’t give up for another seven years. I was tempted, certainly, especially after a little rebound with a super-cheater reminded me of a country song title I once wrote: When I Said I Liked Big Dicks, I Think You Misunderstood.

Enter Warren, who showed up suddenly. Maybe my visibly battered heart excited some rescuer component in him. Certainly the man had his work cut out for him, despite his cocky claim on our first date—when I broke that rule about never discussing your last relationship on a first date—that my ex sure had made his job easy. We’re pushing toward three years now, easily a world record for both of us.

I suppose, as this holiday aimed at zee lovers approaches, I should be thinking of my young, hot domestic partner, and not of a heart and toothbrush trashed at the hands (and boots) of the infamous G2. But whatever part of my heart lives in the camp of romance, another large part can’t let go of cynicism born of the things I did for love. The Warren montage—though not without its moments of fury and doubts and tears and ultimatums and discussions of the merits of a breakup prompted, issued and displayed by both of us at stops along the way—is far more the cheerier, cheesier variety that might also be edited out of a movie. All that laughter and silliness? The trips to Hawaii and Paris? The collection of heart-shaped rocks carefully assembled in a shadow box? Who would buy that sort of thing?

Perhaps, though, Valentine’s Day invites reflection on the bad moments with the bad men— so many of both— not as a testament to my cynicism. At least not entirely. Perhaps these memories prompt the sort of then-vs.-now comparison that offer a reminder that maybe we really can get better at this preposterous, confusing, fucked up game of chemistry and baggage, that mash-up so many of us involve ourselves in despite the mountain of shit all relationships inevitably entail. “The triumph of hope over experience”— as Samuel Johnson put it.

So what have you done “for love”? And tell me, was it really worth it?

Call her a fool, but Spike Gillespie still has faith in love. She blogs for KnitBuzz, JetBlue, and her own vanity. She invites you to join her on Valentine’s Day for Free Sex In Public at BookPeople, 8 pm. Cynicism galore and hookups strongly encouraged.