Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Sleeping Dogs

Well, I don't know about you guys, but I have this thing I do with ex-boyfriends.

It's called stalking.

Well, not stalking, exactly. But hey, when a 9-year marriage unexpectedly explodes in your face like a pipe bomb, your first instict (actually, second, after getting blindly drunk and throwing up cheap red wine in your bathroom), is to google all your old boyfriends to try and conjure some easy, no-strings-attached, somewhat nostalgic sex.

This was over a year ago, when I did this. And although I did find a few old boyfriends, and at least a couple who were willing to have some sex (one of whom was even in a relationship at the time, ick), I never actually went through with it.

See, in order to reconnect with a lover from my past, I'd have to actually acknowledge that he still exists in real time.

I don't want to do that.

I don't want to accept that he isn't exactly as I left him, say, in 1995, sitting on a Salvation Army couch in a cheap rental house, wearing a faded Giants baseball hat and Jesus and Mary Chain tee shirt, rolling a cigarette and begging me not to leave him.

I would have to allow for the possibility that after I walked out that door, so many years ago, to continue my life, that he actually kept living his too. He actually got over me leaving him. He went on to grad school. He slept with other women. Maybe even married one. Maybe even had a child or two.

Ugh.

No way.

Maybe I'm a narcissist. But I prefer to remember these guys as they were: Youthful, wrinkle-free, flat- stomached, patchouli-scented. Without shattered dreams or blackened, cirrhosed livers. Without cancerous moles or stints in rehab.

Truthfully, I don't really want to know what happened next. And if forced to imagine it, I like to picture them ten, fifteen years later, still in exactly the same place. Sitting on the same fugly, fourth-hand wool couch that smelled like Pabst Blue Ribbon. Having perhaps moved to a dingy apartment over someone's garage, but still depressed and lonesome ever since we broke up, surrounded by empty bottles of Jack, porno mags, and crumpled pieces of notebook paper containing unfinished, hand-scrawled poems about a mysterious dark-haired girl.

This, my dear friends, is what keeps me going. Facebook, with it's 'email friend finder' and similarly evil connective devices, keeps trying to punch holes in my transparent, ignorant bliss. But I prefer to stay in my protective, nescient bubble for as long as I can.

So there it is. Say what you will about me. But let me hang on to the tiny morsels of happiness that I've got.

12 comments:

Prunella Jones said...

Amen, sista!

kimberkara said...

You got me looking back at my exes and thinking about calling them for NSA sex should Scooter meet the curb. Blech. Mark has spoiled me I guess.

I'm Scooter, but I might be a troll. said...

Hmm. It appears that Kim is going to get a double helping of orgasms the next time we are together Kris...

Yay, sex.

In any event, human beings are for the most part, resilient and enduring creatures. Your old boyfriends are all more than likely successful or at the very least functional contributors to society.

Just as you are.

Pronto said...

There's only one solution then -


sex with strangers......


just sayin'

Blank said...

Yup.. that carrot is being upgraded to 2 (TWO) Margaritas now.

The truth be told, you can't go back.
If you really wanted to go back, you would not have left in the first place.

Just hang in there.

Anonymous said...

I don't know. I'd still shag my last ex. Right about now.

Krissyface said...

Pru, omg!!! You're alive!!! I was going to send the FBI after you. God knows you've got some record on you, girl. Missed you and your wit. Glad youre back!

Kim, If you put Mark on the curb, all my faith in mankind will crumble.

Scoot, DOUBLE? Nice. I think I know someone who's got you beat though; that's all I am gonna say about that. Yay, sex, indeed.

Pronto, been there, done that. Yawn.

Steve, that's the best advice I've heard all week. Thank you.

Cat, how's it going? Sending you good thoughts...mwah.

Anonymous said...

:) Thanks! I needed a sloppy kiss, girlie! And good thoughts are always a welcome plus :)

Anonymous said...

I hate becoming Facebook friends with pretty, rich and successful high school people that I wasn't friends with the first time around. Or at least that's what I tell myself.

Remember on Growing Pains when Mike stayed home sick and realized for the first time that the bus still ran and Gilligan's Island came on at 3 no matter what happened?

Well that's BS. I think what happened is, once they found out you were looking for them and sex, they conjured up pasts and children and cancer to make you feel badly. They suck ass.

Sometimes time passing is a bitch, especially if we feel like we've been wasting our time.

Anonymous said...

I'm ambivalent on this one. I have had a few lovers I've thought of fondly and more than a bit sadly and then seen them later and was like...GAH, I DODGED A BULLET. In those cases it's a bit of a mercy, but as I get older I am more mature in that sense of not pining away for girls after losing them and seeing that they have exploded into obesity, drug use, and alcoholism is just a big reminder of my own mortality.

Anonymous said...

God I love your writing!

honkeie said...

I have done all kinds of searches on my ex's. and I even met up with a few because I wanted to know what they did with their lives. The funny thing about ex's is that the more that they changed the more that staid the same. And all I kept thinking was, "Man, I remember why I broke up with you."