Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Dumped

Being in a long-term relationship is like being a passenger on the Titanic. You think of it as this big, indestructible force that's going to sail forever. But all it takes is one crack to bring the whole thing down. While it's filling up with water, you're busy listening to the reassuring words and fancy music. You pay no attention the tilting, the creaking, the rushing sound from below. Things will be okay. They have to be. This is the Titanic. The greatest ship ever.

Bullshit.

The ship is going down. And you're motherfucking Leo.

Five years is a long time to spend with someone, especially when a relationship was never the goal in the first place. But relationships tend to sneak up on you when you think you're just fucking and making jokes. Before you know it, you realize you'd rather have her head on your chest than your dick in her pussy. You care if she comes. Genuinely care. Not because you think your sexual reputation is at stake. You notice her flaws and find her more endearing for them. You want to take care of her and make out with her in the rain, because as shitty as those movies and song lyrics are, they're not so shitty when you have someone you can reenact them with.

Sappy becomes good. When you're in private, at least.

Relationships aren't defined by the big moments, but by the small moments in between. The days spent laying around. The trips to the grocery store. Giving up your last french fry. Her drool on your pillow. The things you take for granted -- the mundane, the inconsequential. Those are the things you miss the most. It sucks when you realize you'll never hear her mumble about work in her sleep again.

Distance does things to relationships. Stretches them. Like a thread of gum clinging to the sidewalk and a shoe-bottom. Everyone told me it wouldn't work, but most people are idiots. Assholes. If you can play to the assholes in this world, if you can lower yourself down to entertain them, then you stand to make millions. Dane Cook is living proof of this, although I'm not sure he's lowering himself.

Anyway, this time the assholes were right. It didn't work. But what surprised me is she ended it. I thought that if anybody was going to end it, it would be me or my ever-curious dick. Not the big-headed Asian girl who paid for everything. I miss her big head. I can't blame her, though. I mean how would you feel if your boyfriend abandoned you for a dream? What if the only time you saw him was when you had enough money to buy him a plane ticket? And you still had to convince him to come see you? And he's got all these pictures of him up on his Myspace dancing and drinking with pretty blonde girls and you're at home in the Tennessee woods eating spaghetti and doing crossword puzzles and falling asleep by ten o'clock on Saturday nights. How would that make you feel?

Yeah. I know.

But this is my blog and I have to say, in my defense, I make eight dollars an hour and pay twice the rent she does and have to work as much as possible to stay afloat. My nights out are earned. And I never ever ever forgot to call.

But distance does things to relationships...

I won't go into details (I know a lot of them), but he was 5'6. Five. Six. His dick was somewhere in between. Physically (and mentally, I'm sure), he's an inferior male, which is a huuuuuuuuge blow to my ego. Take how much the average person with a brain hates Oprah and multiply that by ten. That's a big fucking blow.

The problem with inferior people is they're not so inferior when they're around. They're substitutes. Rental cars. Utilitarian entities. She was lonely and he was in the lab next to hers. He showed her attention and that's what she needed. That's what we all need. She told me she likes him, but when we're lonely we'll like anybody who likes us, as long as they're reasonably attractive and don't smell like shit.

Plus I was the only guy she'd ever been with. That's like eating filet mignon all the time. As good as it is, you get tired of it. Used to it. After a while, you want to know what taco meat tastes like.

I'm not looking forward to hitting the reset button on my sex life. I have to start all over. Test the freak waters again. What if the next girl's not a good kisser? What if she doesn't like to be choked out? What if she's not down to put a finger in my ass? What if she doesn't swallow? And how the fuck am I going to find all of this out without her thinking I'm a fucking pervert? Shit.

Still, sex is ultimately sex. Love is not ultimately love. You can't get the same things back with different people. And it makes me sick to think of trying. Maybe it's still too soon. I don't know. All I know is, my girlfriend and I, we hated the same people. We made made fun of retards together. I could fart in front of her, forbid her to do the same in front of me. We could watch each other sleep. Kiss each other with morning breath. Fuck each other with no condom on and without showering beforehand. I could make the odd slur and not worry about her branding me a racist or leaking a tape to the media.

I could talk to her about anything. And I can't imagine, not in a million years, doing that with someone else. And it feeling the same. Or even near the same. No.

If you read my giving-beer-to-the-homeless blog, you may remember James (my homeless friend) saying that if he could do it all over again he wouldn't give his love to nobody. That way they couldn't put a foot up his ass. I disagree. But then again he's black and homeless and I'm just a white guy who thinks way too much of himself. But still...

One of my coworkers is afraid that her burgeoning relationship is going to end in pain. She's thinking of pulling the plug before she gets in too deep. So I asked her this:

"Would you not get a puppy knowing that it would die someday?"

She said she'd get the puppy. So I told her okay then. Don't pull the plug. Because in essence, that's what relationships are: pets. They start out small and untrained and unbelievably happy, and then they grow and get bigger and wiser and older. They slow down. Stay in a lot. But the love is still there. And there's no need to prove that love because of everything that's come before it. The joy, the pain, the laughter. Times have been had, memories have been made, stories will be told. And you've grown as a person. You're better. Stronger.

And that's why it's so hard to say goodbye. To lay with it for the last time and hold onto it. To wish you could go back in time to when it was a puppy and make things that way forever. But you can't. And those tears flow and burn when you wrap it in a blanket and put it in the ground and shovel dirt on top of it. And you stare at that mound and you make sure it's perfect. You put flowers on it. You visit it every day. And you promise to remember and hold onto the pain.

But the pain eases.

The grave gets dirty. You visit less. The weather beats the mound into flat earth again. And as hard as you try to recall the pain, to make yourself cry, you can only squeeze out a couple of tears.

All you remember are the happy times.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really appreciated the comparison you made between getting in a relationship and getting a pet. The decision to get my dog was so spur of the moment that I never considered what it would feel like when she died. Honestly, had I thought it through I never would have gotten her. Bitter, party of one! Yay!

Love you!

Ronnie Pudding said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ronnie Pudding said...

Many moons ago I was in the EXACT same position. Drove across the country to LA, chasing my pipe-dreams like a douchebag. But because I was still kind of a good guy back then, I tried maintaining my long-term relationship with the local sweetheart thinking, you know, once I sold my high-concept breakdancing-in-space CGI action spec for 8 gazillion dollars and/or got my record deal I’d fly her out in my diamond-encrusted Lear jet so we could get to work making all those babies she’d wanted.

And yeah, everyone told ME it wouldn’t work, but they were wrong because OUR love could withstand anything, ward off any temptation, because it was pure and true and woven from the butt-hair of magical Jesus angels.

And it DID work, for a while... until the gum was stretched beyond recognition and we were both left with a mess of infidelity-flavored Bubble Yum all over our hands. Oh yeah, it hurt. But it was also the BEST THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO ME.

Because I was a young-ish, non-deformed heterosexual male -- in possession of a penis -- living in a city FULL of women. Beautiful women. Arguably the world’s MOST beautiful women. And they were young and horny too, and (most importantly) lonely because they’d also moved away from everyone they ever loved to chase their pipe-dreams, and most of them had the sort of low-self esteem and daddy issues which drives unearthly beauties into the arms of shiftless goobers far less aesthetically pleasing than themselves, i.e. guys like me.

Though I’d loved her more than say, Code Red Mountain Dew, I always knew my hometown honey -- who was at least an 8 back in East Bumfuck -- would barely register as a 6 here. But that didn’t matter to me, because I wasn’t the sort of asshole who got hung up on looks, or hard-as-nails bodies, or ginormous casaba-like breasts. Until the blinders came off, and I realized I was in fact EXACTLY that sort of asshole, and thank fucking Crom. Dog will hunt.

But eventually, I found a woman I could make fun of cripples with, choke-fuck to my heart’s content and slap around without fear of her running to the cops... only unlike my hometown honey, she got why I needed to move 3000 miles to scratch an itch. She understood the whole crazy ambition thing. Oh, and she was hot.

And hometown honey? God bless, she’s got a mess of rug rats and a hubby who drives an F150 and she’s happy as a clam. She’s also gained like 30 pounds, wears mom jeans and could probably stuff a busload of midgets into her childbirth-defiled vagina.

I WIN!

Welcome to the best years of your life.

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbTgCooAHI0

Jeff said...

HAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA, Ronnie! Now THAT is some good shit. And I can't believe you didn't sell your breaking-in-space spec. Oh well, I'm sure Mazin's got his own on the way. Thanks, for the comment, man. I appreciate.

Kat, I always appreciate your comments. From 7th grade 'til now -- whoda thunk we'd still be talking? You rule.

Anonymous said...

Jeff stay strong man. It's not as bad as you make it to be. Your writing made my eyes watery, but I still managed to finish without breaking a tear. I'm one of those sensitive and emotional assholes too. I always lived by the rule "whatever is meant to happen, will happen" and sometimes, you know, it's true. We can't avoid it.

I recently broke up with my girl of 2 years. My longest relationship I ever had. And I loved her. I did. I could relate so much to the attributes you have used in your entry, especially about comparing it to a puppy, and wanting to go back in time and change things.

Sometimes, as much as I like to think I'm a realist, I can't help but to rely on a "higher being" to keep me optimistic. You have to think in terms such as, hey if it didn't work out with her, "He" has better plans for you in the store. And just block all those happy thoughts (with her) out. No need to dwell on something that's not there anymore.

You'll be fine, trust me. And you'll find a girl that will make you fall in love again. Trust me. Best of luck Jeff.

Anonymous said...

it could be worse, u could be going bald or sumdin