January 11, 2010

Undiscovered Fetish

0

Lisa’s recent com­ment, where she says that some­one who’s able to teach you a lot sex could make up for unflat­ter­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics like closed-mindedness, got me thinking.

I know what I like, sex­u­ally. As a guy, I’ve prob­a­bly seen it all, espe­cially after being unable to look away at the train wrecks on eFukt, a site with the tagline “Porn you wish you never saw“1. If I had to make a gues­ti­mate, I’d say that my sex­ual deviancy is about aver­age; I’m far from vanilla, but on the other hand, I don’t get aroused at watch­ing Japanese women tak­ing ene­mas of yel­low liq­uid, shit­ting it onto heated pans, and hav­ing a group of peo­ple eat the cooked con­coc­tion2.

At the same time, I’m far from hav­ing explored every­thing in the bed­room, mostly because I’ve never reached the right level of inti­macy. It’s not that I’m embar­rassed; they’re just things I want to share with some­one spe­cial — the way some female porn­stars share anal sex with only their boyfriends, or some women save it for mar­riage — and no one has been that spe­cial yet. That, and the fact my sex life has never become so bor­ing that I felt like I needed to change things up. Besides, secrets aren’t so bad; the fun is gone when when all the secrets are out and there’s no mys­tery left. But even though I haven’t explored these things yet doesn’t mean I don’t know what I like, and I’m pretty sure that’s mostly been deter­mined already.

The last sex­ual thing to blow my mind was when I dated Louise and she intro­duced me to the whole Dominant/submissive sub­cul­ture, of which I had pre­vi­ously been com­pletely unaware. As with a few other car­nal flavours, it’s some­thing I’d like to try with another part­ner in the future, but prob­a­bly only on a con­tract basis because being a per­ma­nent dom3 is too much for me. That was back in 2004, and there hasn’t been any­thing quite as erot­i­cally eye-opening since. Maybe because it was some­thing men­tally sex­ual, not just a phys­i­cal but­ton to be pushed in a dif­fer­ent way.

It feels like there’s lit­tle new to learn about my sex­ual tastes now. It makes me won­der what’s left out there for some­one to teach me (I mean, aside from learn­ing the pref­er­ences of the per­son you’re hav­ing sex with), or for me to dis­cover. Then again, just last week, I read a news arti­cle on a sub­ject of an indi­rectly sex­ual nature, and one part had me think­ing, “Wow, that would be pretty hot”, when it was a very innocu­ous thing that I’m sure most peo­ple wouldn’t even think twice about, so who knows.

  1. I’m not going to put a link from my page, you can just google it. WARNING: VERY, VERY NOT SAFE FOR WORK. And pos­si­bil­ity, san­ity [↑]
  2. I didn’t have the stom­ach to watch the video, but John did, and he gen­er­ously gave me a play-by-play of it as I pre­tended to be involved in his movie col­lec­tion to dis­tract myself from the gross­ness. I remem­ber him say­ing, “Now they’re blow­ing on it because it’s too hot to eat” and real­iz­ing he was actu­ally watch­ing the video and not just mak­ing it up. [↑]
  3. i.e. 100% of the time. I find I’m gen­er­ally dom­i­nant 95% of the time in my rela­tion­ships. [↑]
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January 7, 2010

You Can’t Go Back

14

During his Emmy-award win­ning per­for­mance, Kill the Messenger, Chris Rock has a hilar­i­ous bit on the dif­fer­ences between men and women. He sums it up succinctly:

Women can­not go back­wards in lifestyle. Men can­not go back­wards sexually.

An exam­ple he uses for women is the first time they get into a nice, warm car after club­bing, wav­ing bye to their friends who are wait­ing for the bus in the cold. After that, they can’t be with a man who doesn’t have a car, or as Rock puts it, “That’s how the fuck you roll for the rest of your life”. This extends to guys with their own places, then guys who take them on vacation.

On men, he says, “Once we get the sex we like, that’s how the fuck we roll. I like my cof­fee like this, I like my steak like this, and I like to fuck like this…Ladies, don’t get mad at us. Get mad at our ex-girlfriends. She’s the one that [sic] spoiled it for every­body” because if your ex-girlfriend licks your ass (again, his exam­ple), you expect your cur­rent girl­friend to do the same.

For me, the same is true for girls in gen­eral, but not just in these aspects. I can’t be with a girl who refuses to try exotic foods or refuses to give uncon­ven­tional music a chance, who wouldn’t rec­og­nize the effort I put into my presents, who wouldn’t cher­ish the love and affec­tion I give, who wouldn’t under­stand me, or wouldn’t laugh at my stu­pid jokes, because I’ve been with girls who are a com­bi­na­tion of open-minded, appre­cia­tive, roman­tic, on the same wave­length as me, and actu­ally find me funny (when not com­pletely awkward).

That’s why this entire idea scares me.

I know most peo­ple get more flex­i­ble on things about their mates as they head towards (or beyond) the mar­ry­ing age but I seem to be mov­ing the oppo­site direc­tion. Each girl I’ve been with has been an improve­ment over the last. Now the bar has been raised so damn high I don’t think I’ll ever get there again, and I’d rather be alone than com­pro­mise or settle.

My stan­dards are get­ting higher, and I can’t go back.

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November 23, 2009

Greatness Of My Own

6

When I was dat­ing Louise, and we talked about our exes, she told me one of hers was going to be a diplo­mat, and they broke up because she knew she wasn’t meant to be a diplomat’s wife. I under­stood. By mar­ry­ing into cer­tain careers, you marry into those respon­si­bil­i­ties as well, and they can be too much for some, me included.

So she was with me. I wasn’t bound for great­ness like that.

Still, it made me won­der; what was I meant for? What did she see in me?

I know I wasn’t meant to changed the world.

But I still think I was meant to affect the lives of oth­ers. I was born for great­ness of my own, as small as it may be.

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September 11, 2008

Life With Loo

10

Ever since WordPress 2.5 added native tag­ging sup­port, I’ve been going through my old entries and appro­pri­ately tag­ging each one. Recently, I arrived at the chunk of time where I started dat­ing Louise.

It’s said that every­one has at least one rela­tion­ship where you look back and ask your­self, “What the hell was I think­ing?”. I never believed it until, four years later, I came across those old posts. The words were a stark reminder of how hard I tried to make it work, of how much I did for her, and how it was never good enough.

She would belit­tle my attempts to grow and improve, push me to the lim­its of my tol­er­ance, and when I would speak up about how much it hurt me, she would jus­tify it in say­ing that she would refuse to hide her opin­ions because cou­ples should be “open”. I kept get­ting put down, over and over again.

Read the rest of this entry »

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January 3, 2008

Ersatz

0

This looks familiar.

A place I’ve been, a feel­ing I’ve had, a girl I fucked one night in the fall.

Back then she cried. Lying in bed next to me, she told me she was sorry. I believed her, but I didn’t trust the tears, because she knew how much it turns me on. She got what she wanted any­way, and I sup­pose I did too.

That was the last night I saw her.

And now this. A replace­ment who used my shots, my con­cept, my idea, and called it destiny.

But it isn’t can­did enough. It’s too forced. Unnatural. As if she’s try­ing too hard again to cap­ture what was lost, and what she could have had.

So she found another ver­sion, and used him in my place.

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June 6, 2007

Letting Go of Bronwen

2

Bronwen started dat­ing another guy.

It’s funny, my first reac­tion is to think another guy, as if we’re still dat­ing our­selves. I sup­pose our rela­tion­ship has never been con­ven­tional, but that’s what makes it so spe­cial. We still spend our week­ends together. We still talk on the phone for hours with­out actu­ally talk­ing. We’re close enough that I’m com­pletely com­fort­able around her, enough for me to let my guard to go down.

It’s made me real­ize how pro­tec­tive I still am of her, how upset I’ll be if she gets hurt. I think of all the things I could have done bet­ter, and hope this guy can treat her bet­ter than I did.

I have all these mixed feel­ings about it though. I’m wor­ried that I may lose my friend, but I’m glad there’s some­one to make her happy. In the end, I know I can’t be self­ish. Letting go of her the first time was hard enough.

Doing it again doesn’t make it any easier.

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April 27, 2007

Letter From An Ex-Girlfriend

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Jeff

Where do I start? I can’t even begin to recount the last six weeks of my life, and really if I were able…Im [sic] not sure you’d want to hear it. I won’t say the “let’s be friends” email was a sur­prize [sic]…I sup­pose I just needed to hear it.

I find a let­ter in my mail­box, wrapped in a gold foil enve­lope, teal let­ters on a white page.

The let­ters are blocky, square, with no regard for case. She used to write me notes with her Es as three par­al­lel lines, count­ing on the eye to draw an illu­sion of a ver­ti­cal bar, and her Os dot­ted in the cen­tre. It was one of her things, one of the details she used to be unique.

Now she’s aban­doned all that.

I’m already skep­ti­cal, on my guard.

It’s hard though…I had my chance…I sup­pose you had yours through our relationship…you couldn’t be what I needed then and now look at you — the sub­ject of my fantasies…watching from afar…wishing I’d have saw [sic] these things then — won­der­ing if maybe I had looked through less skep­ti­cal eyes, I could have saw [sic] who you are today.

I’m reminded of why it ended. Of how hard I tried to make it work, of all the things she did to hurt me.

Now she points out her faults. The mis­takes she made. She flat­ters me. She lets her guard down. I’ve never felt her so vul­ner­a­ble, and this is how I know she’s changed.

You lead the struc­tured life I always wanted, I don’t know if you have a coun­ter­part in your life…I don’t know if you’re con­tent now to struc­ture your own world and not yet some­one else’s…there are few things I do know about you…but what I do see…Im [sic] sorry I didn’t before.

Truth be told…Ive [sic] dri­ven all the way to the east end on a few occa­sions and turned back. My inten­tion was to fall at your feet…to kiss them as I had in the past but with a renewed respect for you and a bet­ter under­stand­ing of myself. But I was affraid [sic].

I’m reminded now of what drove me to achieve what I have now. To cast off that part of my life, to buy a house, to live on my own, to move on. I may never have had any of this if it wasn’t for her.

I’m sure you’re shak­ing your head now…maybe laughing…maybe not even read­ing this any­more. You’re done with me it seems. i’m [sic] okay with that…afterall [sic] it’s my own fault. I had that chance and I couldn’t take it.

i’ll [sic] get to the point: on the next page is a short fan­tasy I had pass through my mind yes­ter­day and so I wrote it down in my jour­nal because lately some­thing has changed in me — I never assign a name or face or…person to my fantisies…lately you’ve been front and centre.

I’m reminded of how intensely sex­ual she was. The nights we stayed up, alive in flame, con­sumed by our con­cu­pis­cence, push­ing the lim­its of our bod­ies. There were times when I never felt so alive.

Before you read this next page…know that if you had wanted me at your feet—Id [sic] be there in a heartbeat—even still—what an hon­nor [sic] it would be to curl up at your feet while you read this—

Okay now Im [sic] stalling—because Im ner­vous at the thought of you open­ing your eyes to my want…for you.

Her words aren’t enough. Not enough to change my mind or what’s past.

Too lit­tle, too late.

Note: The sec­ond page, the fan­tasy, wasn’t included, for fear that it would give away the iden­tity of writer. It reads like some­thing from l’Histoire d’O; noth­ing vul­gar, but flat, dry, and devoid of lit­er­ary devices.

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April 20, 2007

Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Bronwen

12

I love you too much baby
For you to be with me
I love you too much baby
I gotta set you free

—Shea Seger, I Love You Too Much

You were the clos­est I’ve ever come to per­fect in a girl­friend. In fact, you raised the bar. Now I know there are girls out there who are funny, intel­li­gent, open-minded, car­ing, sane, and I’ll always be look­ing for the same now.

Making love to you was fun because you’re so damn cute. I loved to look into your eyes, though I wish you’d be able to keep yours open.

In so many ways, we worked. My love of dark choco­late and your love of milk choco­late meant that we’d never have a prob­lem fin­ish­ing off an assorted box. You’re so easy-going, while I’m so uptight. All the lit­tle things, like puz­zle pieces made of clay.

Even though it’s been months since we’ve bro­ken up, our video is still by far the most played item on my iTunes playlist. It’s such a beat­i­ful mem­ory, and I’ll always cher­ish it.

I still miss those notes you used to leave me about what you did dur­ing the day and when you’d be back. Those times we’d take the bus, and you’d rest your head on my shoul­der. Those times we’d wres­tle and fall asleep in a pile, right there, from exhaustion.

I miss all these things, but the fact is that it didn’t feel right, and it wouldn’t be fair to either of us to keep going. You deserve to be with some­one bet­ter. Someone who will fully appre­ci­ate you and the things you do.

I know I never said it in our rela­tion­ship, but I loved you.

And I still do.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

  1. Introduction
  2. Ashley
  3. Michele
  4. Christie
  5. Jackie
  6. Louise
  7. Bronwen
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December 18, 2006

Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Louise

11

The thrill is gone
The thrill is gone away
The thrill is gone baby
The thrill is gone away
You know you done me wrong baby
And you’ll be sorry someday

—BB King, The Thrill Is Gone

Our rela­tion­ship was a night­mare of ups and downs.

You had the amaz­ing abil­ity to make me feel good about myself, by say­ing the right thing with intel­li­gence and eloquence.

Yet every time I felt like I was mak­ing progress, progress that took tremen­dous effort and energy, progress for you, you would put me down. Every time I took a leap of faith and put myself out there, you would hurt me. It wasn’t even a case of bru­tal, tact­less hon­esty; you would insult my pride for no reason.

I think it betrayed a sub­con­scious inse­cu­rity. Something you would do to make your­self feel bet­ter. Like your con­stant need to prove that you’re busy and mov­ing on. It’s as if your life is empty, void, and you’re des­per­ate to fill it with something.

I had to end things when you went too far.

There were no regrets, because I did my absolute best to make things work. Even though I suf­fered, I ignored the pain, and tried work­ing through it. I only gave up when you proved too stub­born to change or understand.

The rela­tion­ship wasn’t a total loss. It was an inter­est­ing intro­duc­tion to the sub­cul­ture. It was pas­sion­ately sex­ual. It also made me more con­fi­dent, although I real­ize now that it wasn’t because of you. You barely gave me any trust, and every step for­ward I made, you pulled me back two. It was me who fought through all the inse­cu­ri­ties and rose to the occasion.

When you came back in January, with­out a word of apol­ogy or men­tion of the wrong you did, I had no inter­est in con­tin­u­ing the rela­tion­ship. After that, I thought of you when­ever I heard the song Buried Myself Alive by The Used.

Then, with all your let­ters and your apolo­gies and your tears, two years later, you asked “nicer than that”.

Unfortunately, it was at an unsta­ble time in my life, so I asked you to back off and wait. Your idea of back­ing off and wait­ing is leav­ing me creepy com­ments and dat­ing to fill the time. I just can’t under­stand how you keep mak­ing these mis­takes. It’s almost like you pur­posely sab­o­tage yourself.

I don’t want to be involved in the drama any­more. Nothing is ever sim­ple with you. Even though you say you’ve changed, it’s not worth the risk to me. You had your chance, and it was a damn good one.

You’ve wronged me too many times. The last time you left my house, not know­ing when or if you’d come back, I felt nothing.

I knew then that the thrill was gone.

A few other things:

  • On the phone, your voice could be so cute that it would make me weak and for­get every­thing you did.
  • Out of all my girl­friends, you were phys­i­cally the least attrac­tive, yet you were the most con­ceited about your looks.
  • It was very much appre­ci­ated when you brought me flow­ers at work, and the times you’ve dropped off food and other good­ies at my door. No one else has done this for me.
  • The way you would remem­ber events was often com­pletely wrong. It wouldn’t be so bad if you weren’t com­pletely con­vinced that your inter­pre­ta­tion was cor­rect. It made things rather scary, like dat­ing a schiz­o­phrenic. You could totally fab­ri­cate how things went, the way you wanted to remem­ber them. The root of an argu­ment would turn into my fault, instead of yours.
  • You were a knock­out in bed.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

  1. Introduction
  2. Ashley
  3. Michele
  4. Christie
  5. Jackie
  6. Louise
  7. Bronwen
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December 11, 2006

Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Jackie

8

Am I not your favourite gad­get, no more?
How come my lit­tle baby?
Am I not your favourite gad­get, no more now?
How come not anymore?

Since you bought me, I feel lonely
Since that day things are wrong
Could you not repair me, honey
Is my war­ranty guar­an­teed gone

—Ellen ten Damme, Gadget

There was always some­thing about you.

Your voice. Your Joisey accent. Your hair style. Your always-on choker. Your pierc­ings (I was always a sucker for brow rings and tongue studs). Your taste in music. Your off-the-wall personality.

It was all so excit­ing. Something I’d never expe­ri­enced before.

But you were a total drama queen too. You would get upset over the most ran­dom, innocu­ous things. I could never tell if you truly believed the ridicu­lous things you said, or whether you just said them for atten­tion. Either way, I hated it.

You could also be as imma­ture as a teenager. I hated how you would do things like leave in the mid­dle of a game and storm off to the other room because you thought you would lose.

I put all my feel­ings aside for you. I would always let you have your way, but you’d never even con­sider mine, and I hated it.

Most of all, I hated how you meant so much to me, while I meant so lit­tle to you.

Even though I knew it wouldn’t last, even though I knew you were com­pletely wrong for me, like poi­son in the blood­stream, I couldn’t end it. Sometimes I still won­der if you ever think of me, or whether I was just another thing you used to occupy your­self in the sum­mer, between boyfriends.

I’ve writ­ten more entries inspired by what hap­pened than by any­thing else. I don’t want to give our rela­tion­ship any sig­nif­i­cance, but the truth is that I can’t deny how impor­tant it was. What we had wouldn’t even count as a rela­tion­ship, if it weren’t for how much it affected me.

My pre­vi­ous rela­tion­ships were never sat­is­fy­ing. It felt like I could never fall in love or appre­ci­ate my girl­friends for who they were, and I always believed it was my fault. Then I fell in love with you, and it helped me learn that the fail­ures of the past weren’t anyone’s fault, and sim­ply the result of incom­pat­i­bil­ity. If it wasn’t for this real­iza­tion, the suf­fer­ing and the heart­break wouldn’t have been worth it.

You were the only girl to ever break up with me. It was the short­est rela­tion­ship I’ve had by far, but for some rea­son, it was the longest for me to get over. My heart tells me you were spe­cial, but my head tells me you weren’t spe­cial at all.

You were only the one I couldn’t have.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

  1. Introduction
  2. Ashley
  3. Michele
  4. Christie
  5. Jackie
  6. Louise
  7. Bronwen
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December 4, 2006

Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Christie

0

I can see the pain liv­ing in your eyes
And I know how hard you try
You deserve to have much more
I can feel your heart and I sym­pa­thize
And I’ll never crit­i­cize
All you’ve ever meant to my life

I don’t want to let you down
I don’t want to lead you on
I don’t want to hold you back
From where you might belong

You would never ask me why
My heart is so dis­guised
I just can’t live a lie any­more
I would rather hurt myself
Than to ever make you cry
There’s noth­ing left to say but goodbye

—Air Supply, Goodbye

Over four years ago, I started this blog because of you. I felt like you never under­stood me, so I needed a place where I could express myself with­out any inhibitions.

I had a lot of hope in you, being drawn to your youth and inno­cence. A lot of hope in us. I always thought you were like clay I could mold. Someone who would even­tu­ally com­plete me, but you never changed or showed improvement.

It took me a long time to real­ize how wrong it was for me to do that. How wrong it was for me to want you to be a dif­fer­ent person.

I never appre­ci­ated you for who you were, and you never deserved any of it.

I hope I didn’t hurt you. I heard from your brother that you’re already on your Masters degree. I hope he’s healthy and happy. I hope your par­ents are doing well, that your dad is retired and they’re trav­el­ling out east like they’ve always wanted when you started university.

There are a lot of fond mem­o­ries of our time together. I won­der if you believed me when I said that I wanted to marry you. It was some­thing I hon­estly felt at the time, until things started falling apart, and I went through one of my phases again. It wasn’t your fault.

I had to end it before I led you on any further.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

  1. Introduction
  2. Ashley
  3. Michele
  4. Christie
  5. Jackie
  6. Louise
  7. Bronwen
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November 27, 2006

Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Michele

5

Why should I stay and pre­tend?
You make me laugh again
My dar­ling, truth is we are not even friends
Love comes and it goes
Where your heart stops no one knows
How did I wind up in this mess, here with you?

Just a moment of weak­ness
I should exam­ine my head
Just a moment of weak­ness
I never meant a word I said

—Bif Naked, Moment Of Weakness

The first thing about you that caught my eye was your plat­form shoes. More specif­i­cally, the lanky way you walked in them with your plaid skirt on. You had such a funny gait that I would study when I was walk­ing behind you in the halls. Sometimes you looked like an injured fawn, vul­ner­a­ble and awk­wardly run­ning away with your long, slen­der legs. It was the very def­i­n­i­tion of sex­u­al­ity to a depressed, hor­monal teenage male.

Those shoes gave you an extra cou­ple inches, and I resented every time you sub­tly knelt so you wouldn’t be taller than me in any pictures.

I only have a sin­gle good mem­ory of our rela­tion­ship. You were sit­ting on my lap in the jacuzzi at Cammy’s place. It was February, and there was snow all around us, but we were warm and wet. Every few min­utes, we would dunk our heads under the water, then style each other’s hair, the win­ter air freez­ing it within seconds.

The more I got to know you, the more I learned that it was all a big mis­take. I stuck it out because I didn’t want to break up with you in the months lead­ing up to your exams. It was espe­cially hard when Lisa started show­ing inter­est in me, but I couldn’t do it.

You were a sex­ual bore. No sound, no reac­tion, noth­ing in bed. Your friends were all snobs. Your thoughts were trite, and your inter­ests were shallow.

You never knew it, but I had to decide between dat­ing you and Marina. It tore me up for a week, know­ing that one of you was going to be hurt. I chose you in a moment of weakness.

It was the biggest mis­take of my high school career.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

  1. Introduction
  2. Ashley
  3. Michele
  4. Christie
  5. Jackie
  6. Louise
  7. Bronwen
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November 20, 2006

Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Ashley

4

The lovin is a mess, what hap­pened to all of the feel­ing?
I thought it was for real; babies, rings and fools kneel­ing
And words of pledg­ing trust and life­times stretch­ing for­ever
So what went wrong? It was a lie, it crum­bled apart
Ghost fig­ures of past, present, future haunt­ing the heart

—Belle & Sebastian, Another Sunny Day

Our rela­tion­ship has always rep­re­sented the inno­cence of my youth.

The Friday nights, play­ing with can­dle wax in the dark, learn­ing how our bod­ies worked. Or the rush of worry and excite­ment about par­ents walk­ing in the door. Olfactory sense has come to mean a great deal in my rela­tion­ships. From those nights we made love with Beth’s voice com­ing through your tinny speak­ers, I get turned on when I lis­ten to Portishead.

I kept the bot­tle of Gap Earth you used, some­thing dear to me since it was dis­con­tin­ued. Every time I smell the noz­zle, it brings me back to the time we were together.

Out of all my other girl­friends, I thought you would be the one to end up in a D/s rela­tion­ship. I never real­ized it until my own intro­duc­tion to the lifestyle, but the things you did were the most nat­u­rally sub­mis­sive. The way you wanted to be tied up with our belts, the enjoy­ment you got from pain, your desire for me to be in con­trol, the way you would take my hands is yours so you could kiss my knuck­les. To this day, I won­der if you still like these things.

I’ve always tried to fig­ure out why I’m never sat­is­fied in my rela­tion­ships. It’s usu­ally not the fault of the peo­ple I date. Sometimes I blame my par­ents for their failed mar­riage, and how this has made me feel that’s it’s nec­es­sary to find the per­fect per­son so I don’t end up like them. Sometimes I think it’s because you were the first, and you came to define what was “right” or not.

Why then, did I break up with you?

I wish I could explain. I thought things would last, because you never hurt me in any way. In fact, you did noth­ing wrong. Maybe we were just too young. They say you shouldn’t marry the per­son you can live with, you should marry the per­son you can’t live without.

And I knew that I could live with­out you.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

  1. Introduction
  2. Ashley
  3. Michele
  4. Christie
  5. Jackie
  6. Louise
  7. Bronwen
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November 13, 2006

Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Introduction

16

An ex e-mailed me out of the blue the other day. She blamed it on the fall weather, caus­ing her to rem­i­nisce and Google my name. We hadn’t seen or spo­ken to each other in over five years.

After feel­ing each other out for the first part of the exchange, we caught up on each oth­ers lives. She’s been mar­ried for three years. Moved out to Kingston after liv­ing through the pol­lu­tion and over-stimulation of down­town Toronto. She has a full-time job while work­ing toward her Master of Education part-time. Her husband’s an artist at heart, she says, try­ing to make a liv­ing off cre­ative writ­ing. No kids yet, but instead, two cats, Emily Wednesday and Shadow.

Me? I moved to Ottawa for uni­ver­sity, bought a house, recently got out of a rela­tion­ship, been work­ing as the mar­ket­ing and IT man­ager at a den­tal lab­o­ra­tory. Oh, and I have one cat, but I’m think­ing of a second.

There were some things I’d been mean­ing to ask her for a while. Going through a series of rela­tion­ships since ours has changed my per­spec­tive, and I’ve always won­dered whether she’s grown in this way as well. I put a few ques­tions to her, but she told me, in an ami­able way, that she wasn’t com­pletely com­fort­able indulging my curiosities.

What she had no prob­lem talk­ing about before was now taboo and off lim­its. Was she afraid of upset­ting her hus­band by dis­cussing such per­sonal things with an ex-boyfriend, or did she sim­ply change so much?

There are a lot of things I’d like to say to my ex-girlfriends, but the nature of a break-up can be that of ran­cor. Communication breaks down. People lose per­spec­tive. I’ve always had a tremen­dous need to express myself, per­haps to the detri­ment of my rela­tion­ships, but dig­ging up what’s past and buried for the sake clo­sure seems a bit self­ish. After hav­ing this ex tell me that she was uncom­fort­able, I real­ized that it may have been rather inap­pro­pri­ate of me.

It’s only here that I can say what I want.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

  1. Introduction
  2. Ashley
  3. Michele
  4. Christie
  5. Jackie
  6. Louise
  7. Bronwen
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November 30, 2005

Show Me Which Constellations You Know, A Denouement

4

Eternal Sunshine 1

Eternal Sunshine 2

Eternal Sunshine 3

People always say that this song or that book or some movie is a story about them­selves in some way. One of my friends is truly deter­mined that his life has been proph­e­sied in the eight and a half minute rock-opera Paradise By The Dashboard Lights. My story was told in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, but it wasn’t any­thing with as much grandeur, it was sim­ply about a girl.

Interestingly enough, it’s not the sto­ries them­selves, but the details of each story that give them such relat­able con­vic­tion. In Paradise By The Dashboard Lights, Meatloaf sings about a coerced com­mit­ment lead­ing to an even­tual eter­nity spent with the wrong per­son because of a stub­born, but more impor­tantly moral, refusal to break a promise. The prog­nos­ti­ca­tion of these par­tic­u­lars sends my friend sweat­ing when­ever he hears the song.

For me, it took the form of pangs, from the details of Clementine’s char­ac­ter. The fucked up girl look­ing for her own peace of mind, who applies her per­son­al­ity in a paste. A per­son who keeps you off bal­ance, always guess­ing, and con­stantly frus­trated. A girl who sends off sirens in your brain telling you to run as far as you can before you get burned, but you stay any­way, against all logic, resigned to the even­tual fate.

And here I was, wait­ing to be saved, think­ing she’s a con­cept, or she’ll com­plete me, or she’s going to make me feel alive. When it didn’t work out, I used to say that it was for the best, that I was in it to have no regrets, but it was really because I couldn’t leave. I was drawn mag­net­i­cally, inex­plic­a­bly, to the last per­son to deserve even the effort of all the torn up thoughts.

To the one that got away.

On the week­end, I dis­cov­ered that I could finally watch Eternal Sunshine with­out those pangs when I had felt them for so long, even when I already knew how impor­tant it is not to for­get these expe­ri­ences, as Joel fig­ures out while hid­ing Clementine in his sub­con­scious. All the resid­ual emo­tions have passed, and now I can talk, and laugh, and think, and share the expe­ri­ence like an embar­rass­ing ado­les­cent mem­ory. It only took two years.

Everybody’s gotta learn sometime.

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