The short answer is to be very ill. I met my first boyfriend my junior year at UC Davis. He was everything I’d been looking for in my first same-sex relationship: tall and male. That makes me sound shallow, but I was twenty and as deep as a birdbath. But his kisses electrified me. He was older and out and lived in the Bay Area and seemed far more sophisticated. Then again, I was twenty, so how hard could that have been, really?
Then the cracks started to show. Was it necessary to cloak every comment in sarcasm? Even at twenty I recognized that for the defense mechanism it was. Then he started mocking my pronunciation of certain words. Hmmm. He asked if I was a “butt virgin.” Yes, and staying that way, apparently.
My mom’s dog hated him on sight, trying to get between us at every opportunity. I should’ve listened to her.
You can’t lie to dogs.
Then he shaved his head. Huh. Apparently one of the things that had drawn me to him was his hair. Like I said, deep as a birdbath.
The final blow came, as it were, one winter’s evening. I’d contracted myself a galloping case of strep. He called from Berkeley, claiming we needed to talk. Ordinarily that would’ve set off the klaxons, but not that night. Oh I knew what that meant, I simply didn’t care. It still rained in California in those days, and I felt horrible. Still, we “had to talk.” Whatever. I hauled myself out of bed. We met. To talk. In the rain.
He dumped me.
I blinked and said, “Can I go back to bed?”
He said we’d be f*ck buddies.
That would imply we’d ever done such a thing in the first place.
And that, best beloved, is how you survive being dumped: a fever, chills, and body aches.
Post script:
Several months later, he earned the sobriquet he would keep for years, over a decade in fact. He became the Ex Who Wouldn’t Go Away. He showed up on my doorstep. I’d changed addresses. And phone numbers.
Without informing him.
He apparently had called my mother, who had never liked him, not unlike her dog. Suddenly she felt sorry for him?
He appeared on my doorstep, claiming he had to recharge his car battery. Did you, now.
I’d grown up considerably since that rainy night. I’d met the man I’d marry. There were flowers from him drying suspended from the heat register in my room.
When the Ex saw them, he blanched. Then he turned red. I allowed myself a smirk, a small one.
So’d that charge your battery?
Maybe I hadn’t grown up that much after all.
But seriously, the fever. --- Christopher Koehler
Christopher’s greatest vice is having opinions. His second
greatest vice is sharing them. He can be found online in the following places:
Facebook.com/Christopher.Koehler
Twitter @christopherink
christopherkoehler.net/blog
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