The Best Worst Breakup Incident

Back to bloggin and it feels so good.

It was time to break up with my second boyfriend.

I learned a couple things from my dumping the dude incident. Don't ask if he's horribly depressed. Don't believe anything he says. Don't cry. Don't be awkward.

Yeah, still having trouble on the last one there.

This boyfriend, whom we will call Loki for love of all things Norse of course, was a REALLY BIG DEAL. We started dating the day after senior prom. It was *~TrUe LoVe~* or something equally sophomoric. 2gether 4ever.

In high school, 4ever roughly equally 4 months. It was my fun, freewheeling summer before COLLEGE and I was all "mature" and "intellectual" and "moving on." This younger guy (which caused quite a scandal in high school. Dating DOWN? For a GIRL? I am all about breaking social norms, clearly.) had started cramping my style. He couldn't stay out as late. He didn't like the hookah bar. He didn't have a car. Oh, the horror.

I went from no standards to ridiculous unrealistic standards in, what, a year? Oh high school hormones.

So after some incident related to him being unable to attend a really important little speech I was giving, I'd decided enough was enough. I think I wrote out a pros and cons list. I know I cried a lot. This was a REALLY BIG DEAL, after all. But I was resolute. And so the execution date was set.

At Panera Bread.

Ironically, I went on my first date with the Dude at a Panera Bread. I don't go there often anymore, because it is now firmly rooted in my mind as a place of high school heartbreak and romantic despair. But they have some damn good black bean soup.

Anyways.

We were grabbing a bite to eat before I had a meeting for a church youth thing and he was headed out to the beach with his family for a week. We sat down at a high table. I couldn't eat. My face was all red. Moment of reckoning.

"I think we should break up." Okay, see, that was good, I didn't say anything bad. "I mean, you know, you just, things keep going wrong and plans keep falling through and you don't care enough about me and I'm going to college anyways and I mean since you know I think it's not like ummmm..." and then I dissolved into a rambling idiot. No mention of death, though, so that's a tiny victory.

He nodded and said he understood, and sat there red-faced, looking at his food. Okay. Simplest breakup ever. Phew. Nothing awkward about that.

Then Dishwasher Bro came up to us.

Dishwasher Bro went to our high school and was somehow vaguely related to our group of friends. He might have worked tech on a play once? I know he had a gross makeout sesh with one of my friends that left her covered in bite marks in the back of her car. Anyway, he thought we were friends.

"R. Grace! Loki! Ahhh man it's so cool to see you guys. Y'know, I'm really glad you guys are staying together even though R. Grace is going off to college. You're like, my favorite couple ever. You just like, work. An inspiration, yo. I love you two."

Except we had just broken up less than two minutes ago.

Not only was I the cruel girl who had just ended a *~TrUe LoVe~* relationship, I'd also let down all these people who believed in us. Thought we were going to make it. Storybook romance, a love for the ages, all crushed because I wanted to suck face with some hazy nameless college guy in the near future. I made people stop believing in love.

We stared at each other and then him, both bright red. I would have burst out laughing at the ridiculous timing, except I was too busy thinking about how my world was crushed and I was in the throes of hearthbreak and despair and I would never believe in love again. I think Loki spoke up.

"Well, actually we just broke up. Ummm. Just now."

There was an awkward pause, where any sane person would have quickly excused themselves and apologized later. Luckily for this story, and unluckily for me, Dishwasher Bro is not all entirely sane.

"Ahhh man," he said, turning to my just-now ex, "That's so rough. I'm sorry, man. You know how girls are. Terrible. Damn, man, that must be really bad. Sucks. But I mean, she's going off to college so now you've got all that single time. Look, bro, if you want to hang out some time, let me know. Girls, man. Awful."

I'M STILL A FOOT AWAY THIS ENTIRE R.GRACE/GIRL-BASHING RANT.

I now sat there, open-mouthed and publicly shamed as a heart breaking whore. I mean, what about my feelings? I still felt bad. Where was the "you guys are the best couple forever" friendliness and adoration that had been poured out mere seconds before? Now I was a villain, a fiend, lumped in with every other two-timing gutter slut.

Gratefully, it was time for us to depart for our various commitments. We hustled out of the restaurant before my character could be trashed any further and had a tearful goodbye in the parking lot. That was it, then. I was through with relationships. Love was a lie. I was a heart-breaking vixen. Alone in the world.

I started seeing a cool community college boy a week later. He wore shoes that flipped out to rollerskates.

Needless to say, we got back together two weeks later... at least for the last three weeks of the summer. But that's a story for another time.

The Calzone Incident

My dear friend the Italian Saxophonist likes to to tell or at least refer to this story every time we hang out. Probably because this story involves 1) another italian 2) calzones and 3) me being oblivious.

I was at a summer program up north when I got my first-ever boyfriend. I'd never really had the urge to date before, but everyone was getting a summer program significant other and I was kind of bored after classes. This super short (long distance in high school is always doomed) relationship taught me two valuable lessons:

1) "My parents go to church" does not mean "We are totally Presbyterian soul-mates." It means his family drags him to church, where he promptly falls asleep.
2) "I don't smoke weed anymore" means "I don't smoke weed anymore... around you. Unless you are super naive, and then I will be blazed around you all the time."

[disclaimer: This post is not to pass judgments about marijuana smokers. Some of my closest friends do it daily. This is to laugh at an awkward situation at my complete obliviousness and general "reefer madness" understanding of weed at the time.]

We head out one night to the local calzone shop around 10pm or so (Out so late! These excursions to calzone shops in my formative youth are why I blow a substantial portion of my paycheck at Artichoke & Basil.) and he sees some of his friends milling about in the back corner. I get briefly introduced and then shooed away to order my calzone and let them talk.

What? Rude.
But you know, whatever. I am cool. I am seventeen. I have disposable income with which to buy my own calzone. I am paying for my food myself like an independent young woman --

CASH ONLY.

Well, damn. I rarely carry cash, even to this day, because I'm bad with change and more likely to spend spend spend. Aha! I think - my significant other just got paid at his summer job and could surely float me $6 until we got back to our dorm and I could pull out my emergency cash. But a whole teenage-feminist (or more likely, stubborn individualist) concern stopped me. ASK a guy to PAY for me? Wouldn't that mean I was indebted to him? Would he think of it of typical googily girlfriend behavior? Would he expect me to ask him to pay for other things? Could I live with myself knowing I'd fallen into a stereotypical relationship cliche of "the guy pays?"

Rumble rumble. My stomach decided that I could live it, and I was HUNGRY NOW. Holding my head high, probably like Oliver Twist when he went to beg for some more porridge, I walked over to the clutch of guys -

Shuffling. Grumbling. Quick movements and suspicious glances. Hands in pockets. Boyfriend not happy to see me.

"I, um, don't have any cash, and if I could just BORROW $6, I would pay you back the second we got back. I promise I'd pay you back right away and it wouldn't be like, a THING, you know..."
"I don't have any money."

WHAT? I was shocked at the audacity of the lie. He had just been paid the afternoon before and had been bragging about the sudden increase in wealth. He listed things he planned to buy, put away some savings for college - all. gone.

"Now I know that's an exaggeration; you just got paid yesterday..." I was trying to be tactful.
"I spent it all."
"You spent it all? In LESS THAN A DAY? On what? ARE YOU CRAZY?!" So much for tact.
"Uhh... stuff." (Do you see where this is going? Sketchy people, suddenly depletion of money, irritability of a nosy bystander coming up...) "Go to the ATM down the street, I need to talk with my friends."

I tentatively poked my head outside the door. It was dark, with few streetlights or people. THIS IS HOW PEOPLE GET RAPED AND MURDERED, I thought. Walking around alone, in an unfamiliar city, to gather money, in the dark. I was already an anxious kid; not to mention PROGRAM RULES stated we couldn't be alone in town. Liability. I glanced back at the guy, now deep in head-bowed, muttering negotiations. No help there. My stomach grumbled again.

I RAN to the ATM, clutching my little canister of pepper spray for dear life. The ATM took forever to crank out the requisite $20, and I stood with my back to it, eyes darting around for any potential predators. It felt like a struggle for survival. I was an urban warrior.

I made my triumphant but still kind of embarrassed return to the calzone shop and gratefully received my melty meatball, mozzarella and marinara meal of marvelousness. Boyfriend seemed happy to see me again. I said "bye ya'll" to the friends, who collectively raised eyebrows at my southern sweetness, probably wondering how I managed to find my way above the Mason-Dixon line.

The next couple of evenings, after locating my boyfriend from strange, inexplicable absences, I noticed a peculiar burnt-rope type smell. I knew he smoked cigarettes sometimes, which had a lingering funk so foul I usually requested the brushing of teeth. His summer allergies must have been acting up, because late at night his eyes would be all bloodshot and red. And surely classes were taking a lot out of him, because he kept asking me to calm down when I was in the midst of chattering about ponies or rainbows or whatever teenage girls with their first boyfriends say. Chill out. Just be mellow. (Mellow... yellow? To this day, I have no idea what "being mellow" actually entails.)

The awkwardness, of course, entails when this story is told to the rapt audience of my lunch table a month or so later - a mix of AP students and the extra artsy freaks. I have a real boyfriend! Look at the quirky stuff he does! Isn't that odd?

My friends laughed harder at the story than I though its funniness warranted. I mean, fighting for my life on the cold streets of a gentrified college town while my boyfriend was a cold-shouldering jerk is humorous, but they seemed to be laughing at something else... at me.

"R. Grace, you do realize what he was doing while you were buying your food, right?"
"Being a dick and ignoring me for his friends? But I mean usually he's JUST THE BEST and-"
"He was buying weed."
"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAATTT" Came my shriek of not entirely disbelief, but shock and horror. "He would never do that. he told me he wouldn't and he really lov- well, likes me a lot. Sometimes. When I'm not too loud."
"All the allergy symptoms you listed are signs of being stoned. And the weird smell? Totally weed."
"But... but..." I realized I'd been taken for a fool.

I also realized I was less important than a plant.

This story gets retold by friends almost any time I start seeing a new guy, somewhat as a ghostly warning of the-ghosts-of-Rebecca-boyfriends-past. And the added laughter of I could probably be dating a serial killer and probably never suspect anything.

But I've heard they're usually such charismatic guys...