Category Archives: Shane

1996, second boyfriend, first internet lover

What Makes an Ex?

The question of what qualifies a boy as an “ex” has come up in my mind lately. For me, it’s easy to choose which four boys from my past are exes and which of the rest of them were flirtations or flings or nothing at all, really.

But to the outside world, I don’t think it would make any sense at all. The relationships I had with them ranged from ten months to three years. The physical aspects differed from literally nothing to… well, practically everything. I barely talked to some of them. I rarely was in the same room with some of them (which is probably a good thing, in some cases). I spent every waking moment with a couple of them. I poured my heart and my soul and my everything out to some… but not all.

All of them, though, are exes, and none a “more important” ex than the others. Why?

I was fourteen when I dated Joe, and I had no idea what dating was about. Most of the time, I sort of didn’t really believe any of it was happening anyway, and one day I’d wake up and this beautiful Adonis-boy would be gone, like a dream you can’t quite remember. I don’t think I ever really let myself get close to him, because I didn’t believe he was real.

Shane is the obvious example of what doesn’t make sense. My friends referred to him as my “internet lover,” and it wasn’t that far off, I guess. We never made out. We never cuddled. We never held hands. But we wrote each other long emails every day. When I went to summer camp, we wrote long letters by hand every day. We shared our secrets and our passions and our stories (real and fiction). In many ways, he seems more real to me than any of the other exes. But then, so do characters from romance novels, sometimes, so…

I don’t even know what to say about Luke. I guess you can’t spend three years of your life “with” someone and not include them on your exes list. And we were certainly more than friends. But all the moments I love and cherish about Luke are moments when we were friends doing friend things.

Matt qualifies by default because he utterly destroyed me, and you can’t do that without attaining ex status, I think.

So why? Why have these four made the cut?

Maybe it was longevity. If ten months is the magic number to make you boyfriend/girlfriend, all of them qualify. Maybe it was warm, squishy feelings, because I had the feels for all of them at some point. Maybe it’s the amount of heartbreak, because even the smallest heartbreak still hurts.

Maybe it’s just that I’m still thinking of them, all these years later.

Bartholomew

The fall semester after I broke up with Luke, I met Bartholomew. Not Bart. Never Bart. Bartholomew.

We both had a campus job that required us to show up before classes began for training. And it was one of those “trainings” that require lots of group work and getting-to-know you icebreakers and stuff.

I hate icebreakers. I hate group work. I hate anything that makes me reveal stuff about myself before I am absolutely ready to do so of my own accord. Icebreakers make my palms sweat and my stomach twist. And so when it was time to partner, I looked around the room for the most miserable person, because at least then I would be sharing in my misery with someone else. I found Bartholomew.

We were pretty awesome at sharing our misery. The rest of the morning, we two sought each other out for every group activity. We sat by each other at lunch. And then I cordially bid him adieu, explaining that I needed to go brush my teeth before afternoon training.

This amiable misery-sharing continued. We chatted during breaks. We subtly sent eye-rolls across the room about stupid shit. By about the third day of training, we said goodbye after lunch and it went:

“Well, see ya later Bartholomew.”

“Later, Ramona. Got to go brush your teeth, right?”

“Am I that predictable?”

“Kinda.”

“Great.”

“Want to come watch a movie with me on afternoon break? I have a really big DVD collection.”

“Um… sure.”

And I had the first inkling that my read on the whole situation was wrong. Amiable misery-sharing just-friends did not watch movies together on afternoon break, did they?

Then again, maybe they did. How was I supposed to know? I’d been dating Luke for three years. I wasn’t sure how to be friends with a boy without pausing to make out at least a few times. So, I told myself to calm down and just go with the flow. Just watch a movie with the guy. He’s just being nice.

On afternoon break, I went up to his dorm room, which was pretty sparse except for a really big couch and the biggest TV I’d ever seen in my life, let alone in a tiny top-floor dorm room with barely enough headroom to walk. And he was not lying about his DVD collection. It was big. He was a movie buff, he explained. He wanted to get into filmmaking.

He let me choose because he said he’d seen them all anyway, but he made me promise to pick one I hadn’t seen before.

Shane told me once that he wished he could have been with me when I saw Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark the first time, because it was his favorite movie ever in the world and he just loved to relive the first time he ever saw it by watching other people see it for the first time. So I guess maybe that’s what Bartholomew was thinking.

Or, possibly, he just wanted an excuse to cop a feel, because his collection consisted mostly of horror movies, and I am a well-known big crybaby about scary movies.

I picked Scream.

I tried to enjoy the movie, except that Bartholomew kept saying weird stuff like, “Why don’t you take your shoes off?” and, “Are you scared?” and, “Why are you all the way over there? I won’t bite.”

And honestly I was coiled so tight with so many scareds that I just mumbled responses and sat up stock-straight with my shoes on, thank you, on the opposite end of the couch from him.

I was scared of the movie. I was scared that my feet might smell bad if I took my shoes off. I was scared that if I got closer to Bartholomew, he would do something distinctly un-buddy-like, like put his arm around me. I was scared to be in this stupid situation at all because I didn’t know what to do with this boy, who I thought was a lot like me and therefore scared of any social interaction that is not completely clearly laid out, and he was hitting on me and holy shit I was not ready for this yet, and I just wanted to be frie-e-e-e-ends, Christ, why does life suck so much?

And I made it through the movie and I escaped with my shoes and the remains of my social dignity as quickly as I could.

After that, Bartholomew was not interested in amiable misery-sharing. He was content to be miserable by himself whilst sending me the occasional dark glare. I must have hurt his feelings when I ran out on him without any indication that I wanted him to make a move. But I didn’t. I wanted… well, I wanted amiable misery-sharing.

One weekend in the not-distant future, I went home and told my mom about how I’d made friends with this nice boy, but then he wanted to make a move and I wasn’t interested, and then he didn’t want to be my friend anymore, and in her motherly wisdom, she said, “Boys are stupid.”

Anyway, Bartholomew and I weren’t friends after that. We were still in the same circles with our jobs and stuff, and we were never openly hostile to one another, but he wasn’t interested in what I had to give, which was friendship, the end. I was mad at him for a while about that, but you know, at least he was honest. Stupid, maybe, because I am pretty awesome to have as a friend, but honest.

And, by the way, he’s a producer on a super popular show now. And I chat with him occasionally on Facebook– sometimes about our shared misery. We’re still really good at that.

Three Small Words

I’ve said, “I love you,” to the four exes in my life. I didn’t always say it first, and I didn’t always say it a lot, but I said it to them.

With Shane in particular it was… different. We were long-distance before the Internet really made long-distance normal. We were on the cutting edge of Internet long-distance, let’s say. (Yeah, let’s say that, because the alternate explanation is that we were totally weird.)

We did say “I love you,” which, in itself, is kind of a thing. But we were also fifteen years old and long distance. It’s kind of a big thing when you add in those factors.

So I think I sort of understand why Shane often qualified his I-love-yous with a little dig or a joke.

I love you… more or less.

I love you, or at least strongly like.

Well, I guess I love ya, when it comes to that.

It never registered as hurt, exactly, when I was in the moment, but when I read those letters back, it causes a little stab of… something. We were cutting edge (or weird, or brave, or whatever) in a lot of ways, but I guess you can’t be great at everything. We shared a lot of words between us– poetry, compliments, adorations– but those three small ones seemed to give us some trouble.

Maybe it gives me that little stab now because I know that years after we broke up, we talked and the infamous, “I don’t really think what we had counts as real love anyway,” thing happened.

But it was real to me. And that little stab reminds me just how real.

What I Did For Love

Over the years, I’ve done many things in the name of love…

  • Took an astronomy class just for an excuse to be on the football field in the dark with the boy I liked
  • Grew out my hair
  • Dyed my hair
  • Cut my hair
  • Permed my hair
  • Hung out the passenger side of a pick-up truck shouting non-sensical phrases about chickens in Spanish
  • Bestowed sexual favors outdoors in plain sight of a military helicopter (In my defense, I didn’t actually know we were in plain sight of the helicopter until it buzzed us at low altitude with its spotlight turned on. Oops.)
  • Gotten piercings
  • Listened to many hours of crappy 80s rock, crappy Irish rock, and ska
  • Made friends with many a mother, younger sibling, and cat
  • Written copious amounts of letters and emails
  • Cancelled plans with friends so I could wait by the phone
  • Cried myself to sleep
  • Learned a strip tease routine
  • “Forgot” my underwear
  • Prayed so hard my whole body shook with the effort
  • Forgave embarrassing public drunkenness (not mine)
  • Forgave embarrassing public weirdness (also not mine)
  • Forgave back-handed compliments
  • Went on road trips
  • Made mixed tapes
  • Wrote terrible poetry
  • Yearned
  • Pined
  • Moved on

My Four Avengers

I do have other loves besides revisiting past relationships over and over again, and one of those loves is the movie The Avengers. There’s a lot to love about it, particularly that it features like eleventy hot super heroes. I mean, come on.

So, I thought I’d combine these two loves and tell you who my exes would be, if they were one of the Avengers.

Joe would be Thor. No question. In fact, the minute I saw Thor, I thought about Joe. It’s the hair mostly. And the biceps. And, truthfully, the fact that he seems a little dumb. But hey– sometimes great hair and some muscle are really all you need to get the job done.

Thor

Shane is Hawkeye. There’s really no other place to put him, either. Here’s my caveat: I don’t read comic books, so I don’t know anything about these guys outside of the movies… but Hawkeye seems like the strong, silent type to me. Shane wasn’t exactly silent, but he was definitely deep.

poster-of-hawkeye-in-the-avengers-2012

Luke has got to be Agent Coulson. I really wanted to assign him a superhero, but the things that made Luke himself also make Agent Coulson himself: genuinely a nice person, and funny. Also, he’s a hero in his own way, so there’s that.

tumblr_m90k2811Fr1rw2uyvo9_400

Matt’s a toughie, but I think he’d be The Hulk. Mostly because he was moody. I’m sure he’d protest and want to be Captain America. Sorry, Matt. I calls ’em like I sees ’em.

markruffalo5

Worlds Collide

When you’re a serial monogamist like I was, sometimes your exes meet your currents, and world collide. I have never had one of these meetings go well.

When Shane and I broke up, we were still long distance. We’d only met once during our courtship, and then only for a couple of days.

A few months after we broke up, I started dating Luke. We’d started off as friends and we weren’t much further along in our dating relationship than burping contests and one-armed hugs when Shane came by during a college visit. Shane and I were still friends, so we ended up hanging out… all of us.

It was me, Luke, Shane, and a few of my other high school girl friends, and we were pretty much doing nothing in the basement/den of the house, as teenagers are wont to do. Shane and Luke both felt awkward, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more awkward in my life, so there was plenty of awkward to go around.

Apparently Shane’s way of dealing with awkward was to make marginally inappropriate jokes.

“So what’s new with you?” I asked, nearly choking on awkward.

He responded, “Why don’t you come sit in my lap and we’ll talk about the first thing that comes up?”

And the awkward spread like an airborne virus. Nervous giggles all around. (From Luke, too.)

There may have been more penis jokes, but I’ve blocked them from my memory. These were traumatic innuendos for a 16-year-old girl desperately trying not to think about penises, especially the penises of ex-boyfriend and current boyfriend both in the same room, but not being able to not think about ex-boyfriend’s penis (or imagining it, as I never did see it) and wishing I could flirt with ex-boyfriend, but feeling horribly guilty at even the thought. It’s a distinct possibility that the portion of my brain that was hearing penis jokes literally exploded, which is why I can’t remember any more of them.

I do remember that eventually we ordered a pizza and went to go get it. I was driving, and Shane called shotgun, which caused a pained expression from Luke. Shane gracefully (I thought) gave in and decided Luke should sit shotgun, but as we were pulling out of the driveway, he let loose with more awkward.

“Thanks for letting me sit shotgun,” said Luke, who was always nice to a fault.

“No problem,” Shane returned. “I figured you’d want to sit up there and fondle Ramona’s leg.”

Fondle. He said fondle.

And then Luke did the “hurr hurr hurr” dude laugh and reached over and fondled my leg.

I slapped his hand so hard the entire car went silent.

I have never before or since wished to die instantly in a car crash.

Later, it was time for me to drive Shane back to the hotel where he was staying with his folks. And, of course, everyone in the basement got up and wanted to ride along.

“No,” I snarled. “I’m taking him myself. I’ll be right back.”

Luke backed off, hang-dog. I fumed. How dare he fondle my leg in front of my ex-boyfriend? How dare he make me feel guilty for wanting to flirt with my ex-boyfriend? How dare he be less sexy than my ex-boyfriend? Argh.

And, in hindsight, the weird part was that I was not mad at Shane at all for making things more awkward. He didn’t have to make penis jokes. He didn’t have to say the word “fondle” in front of God and everyone. But he did, and damn my messed up psyche, I totally liked it.

Nothing happened on the ride to his hotel. In fact, nothing ever happened with Shane again.

And probably no one remembers the penis jokes and fondling but me… at least I hope that’s the case.

The Black Fedora

Shane wore a black fedora. He was fifteen, and so was I, and there weren’t too many guys in high school who had affectations like black fedoras.

(My “affectations” were mostly that I decided maybe not to wear the pink glittery unicorn shirt anymore, since I was fifteen now.)

He somehow managed to pull it off, though. He sent me pictures before I met him, with the hat. Even his senior photos featured the hat. When I finally did meet him I thought it was weird at first. It was the summer, after all. Who wears a black fedora in the summer? But he did.

And that’s the thing I remember about him first when I think about him now– that stupid black fedora that he wore despite being fifteen and it being the heat of summer. It was a small act of bravery in a world that hadn’t required too much bravery of us yet.

I hope he kept wearing it.

Runaway Girlfriend

You’ve seen that movie Runaway Bride, right? Julia Roberts plays an adorable, but damaged woman who keeps getting engaged to “the perfect guy” and then leaving him at the altar. This is all supposedly because she morphs herself into what she thinks the guy wants her to be, but in the end, she (somewhere in her psyche) realizes she’s not being true to herself, and runs away.

I sort of wonder if that plot sounds far-fetched to some people. It doesn’t to me. Because I’ve done the same thing, many times. And it went beyond how I liked my eggs.

The Joe Me

Before I met Joe, I had consciously decided to re-invent myself. I was fourteen years old, just about to start high school, and had just moved across the country with my family. To cope with the potentially crushing change, I decided that this was my chance for a clean slate. I could be beautiful, and popular, and desired. I practiced my smile in the mirror. I convinced my mom to let me wear this pair of ridiculously tiny white shorts. I experimented with make-up.

And then Joe appeared, just at the height of my confidence in my new identity. I was coy, not shy. I was mysterious, not quiet. I was classically pretty, not frumpy. He bought it. I almost died of shock.

So, really, The Joe Me was more my construct than his, but he helped perpetuate it for the ten months we were together before he went off to college.

The Shane Me

I sort of created a construct for myself on purpose with Shane, too. Before we knew each other, really, we played a role playing game together (ugh, I know) where he was this badass Indiana Jones type and I was an even badder-ass lady smuggler with red hair and an attitude problem.

The thing is, it turned out that Shane really was kind of a badass Indiana Jones type– I mean, as much as a 15-year-old can be. I guess he just assumed that I was more like my character than not, too, so he treated me that way. He sent me a card once that he said made him think of me:

I want a sensitive man… One who’ll cry when I hit him.

This was about the time in my life, too, when I decided that most emotion was unnecessary. I stopped crying over sentimental things– and, truthfully, mostly openly scoffed at them. “Nice” became the most hated label anyone could apply to me (although it was still applied often). I desperately tried to be the badass Shane thought I was.

The Luke Me

Luke and I were best friends for a long time– like months (that is a long time in high school)– before we started dating, and I was drawn to him because he was wide-open funny. You know the type: They’ll do anything for a laugh. He was perfectly willing to make a complete fool of himself just to make you smile. He memorized full scenes of funny movies and could repeat them back verbatim, with voices. Everyone absolutely loved him.

When we started dating, I knee-jerk resisted being labeled “Luke’s girlfriend.” No. I would not be nameless girlfriend. I would be funny in my own right. So I developed my own brand of humor. Sure, I’d indulge in silly costumes and general tom-foolery with him from time to time, but my style was understated and acerbic, compared to his wild shenanigans. But I was funny. And as far as I know, I managed to avoid the “Luke’s girlfriend” label fairly successfully.

The Matt Me

Oh, dear Lord. The Matt Me is probably the me I wish I could have avoided being. By then, I was this weird mix of leftovers from the other mes (a little coy, a little badass, and a little funny) plus the real me, which was a huge dollop of awkward and insecure and a whole lot of sensitive, squishy mess. When Matt swooped in, he brought with him the drama of growing up in a dysfunctional family, where you yell and shout and call names and say horrible things to each other, all in the name of love.

In order to defend myself, I yelled back. The drama swallowed me whole. I got moody and mopey and angry, with not a small amount of argumentative thrown in for good measure. I snarled at everyone for even the smallest infractions. Imagined slights became gaping wounds that had to be avenged.

So who did I end up being?

In the movie, Julia Roberts takes a break from relationships and figures out who she really is. It’s all very neat and clean. She likes the kind of eggs she likes, and she hates all the other kinds. The end.

In real life, it’s not quite that simple, I think. Because there are parts of those versions of me that will always be me. I will always default to mysterious when I want to be desirable. I will always swing toward badass if you cross me. I will always crack a joke to try to make myself memorable. And, though I hate to admit it, I will probably always snarl defensively if you hurt my feelings, even slightly or by accident.

Does that make me Not Me? No, but I think it makes all my exes part of me– and that will never really go away.

Three Smiles

Have you guys seen Win a Date With Tad Hamilton? Not a particularly great movie, but when I saw it, there was a line that made me choke on my own saliva. Pete, the dork and real love interest (of course), is giving the treat-her-right speech to Tad, and he says:

Like do you know she has six smiles? One when something really makes her laugh. One when she’s making plans. One when she is laughing out of politeness. One when she is uncomfortable. One when she is making fun of herself. And one when… she’s talking about her friends.

But let me take you back.

Shane was what my friends referred to delicately and completely without snark as my “Internet lover.” This was in 1995. Match.com did not exist. We had one computer in the house that my three siblings and I shared. No one had cell phones– or at least in any iteration that the current generation would recognize. The Internet was not full of LOL cats. In fact, the Internet was mostly full of nerds in chat rooms.

And if you were a nerd in a chat room, you could, sometimes, find nerdy Internet love.

Shane and I didn’t meet in person for quite a while, but we did, eventually, when he came to town with his folks on a trip, ostensibly to scout out colleges, I think.

Things had already gotten as “hot and heavy” as things can get between two 15-year-olds who email back and forth (and exchange fan fiction, if you want to know the whole nerdy truth), but things in person were a little… awkward.

On my part, there was a lot of blushing and umming and giggling. He was smoother, but I think not as suave as he was hoping to be. Still, there were moments– moments when we both managed to pull ourselves together enough to communicate like reasonably sane and intelligent people.

One such moment came when we were in my room talking (actually talking, with the door open, people– we were nice young things) and he looked at me and he said, “Do you know you have three smiles?”

And I ummed and blushed a little, because I have a way with words.

“You do,” he insisted. “You have the one you’re doing now. It’s like the pretty, polite school picture smile. No teeth.”

And I smiled a little bigger. Who wouldn’t?

“And then there’s that one.” He paused to wink at me. “That one’s your happy smile, the one that goes up to your eyes and I can tell is the real one.”

And then I laughed, probably out of pure glee, because no boy had ever so thoroughly wooed me.

“Aha, that’s the one I love best,” he said. “That’s your super-smile. The one when someone really makes you laugh, or surprises you… in a good way. And I’ve been trying to get you to do that one all day.”

And I think I may have melted into a freaking puddle right then.

So when I heard Pete say his line in that dumb movie, my mouth dropped open until my popcorn fell right out. I may have uttered, “He stole Shane’s line.”

And then I melted into a puddle all over again, even though that movie came out in 2004, nearly ten years after Shane unlocked all my smiles in one 30-second woo-of-the-century, and at least a couple of years after my last conversation with him.

Such is the power of a really good woo.

The Wives

I’ve recently learned that all four exes are married. It took a little stalking on my part, but hey, nobody’s perfect.

Joe married Skipper and they created a spawn, as you know. I am regularly subjected to Facebook posts of their baby doing things like slinging food around and picking her nose, and this is supposed to be adorable.

Luke, as you know, married his weird hipster girlfriend and also spawned. There are very few pictures on Facebook of this spawn. They’re probably all on Instagram instead.

Matt married the first girl he dated after me, which I guess I can’t fault him for. (But I sort of do.) And now they have twins. Pretty much the only time he posts about them is when they are vomiting, so you know, I don’t find them that adorable.

And I just found Shane. Yeah, in a dick-move, ex-girlfriend, full-on stalk, I found him on GooglePlus, clicked on all his contacts, and pieced together that he is married. To a PhD. A pretty one. Goddamn it.

I will admit here that I don’t particularly like any of The Wives. They are physical manifestations of everything I failed to be. They are perky and adorable and thin and smart (well, some of them are), and they are, I’m sure, better wives for my exes than I would have ever been. If I were a charitable human being, this would probably make me happy and peaceful. Since I am me, it makes me sort of snarky. Not bitter, exactly… just… vaguely itchy in the hate corner of my heart.

Up on the Roof

Shane and I were long-distance internet lovers before long-distance internet lovers were really normal. Yes, in this way, I was weird. I know. Shocking.

He came to visit once while we were still dating. I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but he somehow ended up hanging out with me for the day. We played badminton and went to the arboretum and met up with some of my friends and he threw his arm around me amiably and took my picture and played with the family dog. It was a nice day. But the thing I remember most about that day was sharing my “hiding spot” with him. (Not as dirty as it sounds– but we’ll get to that.)

I don’t know if all teenagers do it, or just me, but I delighted in knowing things that no one else in my household knew. I knew, for example, that I could pop the screen off my bedroom window and climb out of it fairly easily. I tried it several times, just to prove it to myself. I never actually had to use my super secret escape method, but I could have if I’d wanted to.

I also knew that I could climb onto the roof of the shed in our back yard and sit on the side facing away from the house, and no one would know I was there. This I did fairly frequently. I had my own room (which was extremely lucky in a family as large as mine), and really, no one ever bothered me if I went to my room and closed the door, but the roof of the shed somehow seemed more private. I’d go up there to think when I really needed to be alone.

I took Shane up there. I’m not sure why. I can’t remember taking any other boyfriend up there. It could have been because I knew he wouldn’t be popping by to visit whenever he felt like it, and climbing up there to invade my privacy. But, mostly, I think it was because I just wanted to share something secret with him, that was only mine to share. In a lot of ways, Shane already knew me better than most people. He’d read my writing (fiction and non-fiction), and when you’re a writer (even if you haven’t decided yet that you’re a writer), that means something. So it was probably also because I felt more comfortable with him than I’d ever felt with Joe.

We sat up there together in the afternoon sun, reclining on the slope of the roof, soaking up the last warmth of the shingles. I don’t remember if we talked about anything important, or if we even said anything at all, but I remember feeling happy. It wasn’t a secret anymore that was just mine– it was ours. And I was glad.

The List

I wouldn’t say I’m given to fits of romanticism, really. In fact, I’ve been described as a realist, or, if you want to think of it that way, even a pessimist. So I never had really firm expectations about my boyfriends.

My list of nonnegotiables for a mate has always resembled something like this:

  • Kind to animals
  • Literate
  • Heterosexual

Everything else can pretty much go either way. I’ve dated guys with long hair and short hair, shy guys and outgoing guys, nerds and jocks, college-bound and not, funny guys and serious guys. It never seemed to me that any of that stuff was really a big deal, in the long run.

Still, certain things came along by chance, and they are memories I never want to give up.

  • Joe’s great shoulder massages.
  • Shane’s beautiful, eloquent letters in his fancy handwriting.
  • Luke’s cartoon drawings of us as lions or fish or whatever creature he decided to make us that day.
  • Matt’s made-up silly songs about every part of life imaginable.

None of those are things I could have put on a List of Things My Future Mate Must Do, but they were awfully nice.

In hindsight, I can see I might have needed a slightly longer list of requirements. Maybe should have added:

  • Non-smoker
  • Good relationship with preferably non-crazy family members
  • Not too clingy or needy
  • In close enough geographic proximity to actually, you know, see once in a while
  • Confident…
  • But not overbearing or controlling
  • Totally into me (not into me as a curiosity, or into the me that he may someday be able to turn me into)

That’s probably really not too much to ask for, but I never thought to look for it. I never thought, “Hey, I deserve a guy who is totally into me,” or, “You know, I don’t think I can make this work if we’re never going to see each other.” These are valid thoughts. I just never had them.

And I can’t decide if I would have been able to come to a list like that on my own, or if I had to go through the crap first.

The Worst Thing Shane Ever Said

“I don’t really think what we had counts as real love anyway.”

I’m not going to be naïve and try to claim that Shane did not mean that. I’m pretty sure he did. I’m pretty sure he also hoped it would wound me. He had his reasons. And he aimed well.

Shane and I were sort of doomed from the start. We were dating on the Internet before Internet dating was even a thing. And we were fifteen. Nothing good was going to come of it.

We wrote impassioned letters. We flirted in real-time chat rooms. We emailed daily. But we didn’t even meet for months. And, when we did, we weren’t sure how much of our online game-playing should or could actually transfer into the real world. It was awkward to say the least, complete with a strange kiss that missed the mark, I mean, literally. He went for my cheek and got my ear, and that was our lone taste of physical passion—a poorly-aimed peck.

And it was high school. I chafed at anything that was difficult to explain or that made me seem abnormal. Shane was both of those things. My friends wanted to know about him, but I couldn’t say and still maintain my cool. Every time I mentioned “boyfriend” and “Internet” in the same phrase, I turned beet red and felt the need to disappear. While I was pretending to be some kind of flaming-haired, kick-ass, girl-hero with Shane, in my real life I was a shy fifteen-year-old whose only wish was to (please, dear God) at least sort of fit in for once.

And so, when Shane brought up in an email that things were maybe not quite working out and that maybe we should talk about it, I felt a huge sense of relief. No more trying to explain him. No more embarrassing out-of-the-norm stuff to think about. I could be normal, and I desperately wanted to be normal. I didn’t stop to think whether I wanted to be normal more than I wanted to love this boy. I don’t think I realized that was the choice. The relief was so overwhelming that I didn’t even have room for guilt.

I was surprised when he wanted nothing to do with me after that, but I let him go. Years later, I got back in touch with him, to his reluctance, I think. And that’s when he told me he didn’t think our love really counted anyway.

And maybe that’s when I realized that I’d made the wrong choice.

 

Musical Legacies

All the boys I’ve loved before have left their marks on me—sometimes in the form of emotional scarring, sometimes in the form of broken belt loops (but that’s a story for another day), and quite often in the form of a musical legacy.

Shane, romantic that he was, sent me a mix tape.

I realize I’m dating myself here, but mix tapes used to be the absolute height of dating demonstrations of love. There was a lot of planning that had to go into the appropriate mix tape. You had to make it something that showed yourself, something that the person you were wooing would be impressed by, and something that got across your feelings about that person. I, personally, was not great at mix tapes. I would generally just start willy nilly picking stuff and when I ran out of room on the tape, I was done.

But Shane’s tape was a work of art. He picked a huge variety of music, from instrumental soundtracks to The Moody Blues. In the liner, he wrote commentary on each song in his fancy handwriting. He put “It’s All About Soul” by Billy Joel on the tape and, in the liner notes, told me that it was the song that made him think of me. I wasn’t sure what to think at first—Billy Joel is a little notorious for back-handed compliments. In the end, though, it became one of my favorite songs… still is, actually. I bought Billy Joel’s greatest hits in large part because my Internet boyfriend from high school put him on a mix tape for me once.

Luke made his own contributions. He was actually in a “band” in high school. But, from what I gather, the “band” mostly just messed around and screamed unintelligible lyrics from time to time before dissolving into fits of mirth.

But, he learned “Crash” by the Dave Matthews Band, and played it and sang it for me. This was a big deal. Luke did not sing for anybody, except to entertain small children and to scream unintelligible lyrics from time to time. He waited until it was just him and me and his guitar, and it was one of the sweetest things he ever did for me. I can’t really tolerate much Dave Matthews Band, but “Crash” is still one of my favorite songs, like, ever.

Matt was a strange one. He was into Irish metal. You read that right. I never could quite get into it, despite the concerts he dragged me—uh, invited me to. He did, however, leave me with a lasting love for The Corrs, who don’t sing Irish metal, but are Irish at least.

My favorite song by The Corrs? “I Never Really Loved You Anyway.” I think Matt may have gotten the short end of the stick on his musical legacy.

Let’s Still Be Friends

Someone, one of the two people in a relationship, always wants to be friends when it’s over. It’s usually the person who did the dumping. Therefore, it was usually me.

I didn’t set out to be a heartbreaker. My first “breakup” was really more of a non-breakup. Joe went to college, I stopped calling and writing letters, he slept with some girl, and we never got back together. It didn’t really hurt my feelings, and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t wallowing in self-pity while he was banging what’s-her-name.

I wouldn’t have minded staying friends with Joe. He wanted to stay friends with the possibility of benefits. I flatly turned him down and we never spoke to each other again.

I definitely dumped Shane, although he brought it up first, so it was kind of me being a weenie about dumping him. Honestly, the whole long-distance Internet boyfriend thing was cramping my style a little. I did really want to stay friends with him, but when you rip out someone’s heart and stomp on it (intentionally or not), they sometimes don’t want to keep emailing you regularly. This mystified me for many years.

Shane and I spoke to each other once a few years later. He told me he’d never really loved me anyway and so, in that case, our break-up really hadn’t been that big of a deal and I was forgiven. I didn’t feel much like keeping in touch after that, either. I guess if I’d been a friendly ex, I would have been happy that he’d managed to cobble back together the pieces of his broken heart, but instead I was just pissed.

I dumped Luke, too. Poor Luke. A few months after I dumped him, an acquaintance of his asked me about him, and I told him we broke up.

“Dude,” the friend said, looking almost as heartbroken as Luke had when I’d done the deed. “That must have torn him out of the frame.”

Guilt: I haz it.

Apparently, this you-dumped-me-and-now-I-hate-you thing has no statute of limitations either. At age 29, a good ten years after we broke up, Luke came back to town for a visit. He invited all his old friends out to meet him for drinks via Facebook—I mean, pretty much all his old friends, even the ones he never talked to in high school, but then friended on Facebook years later. All his old friends except for me—the girl who was his best friend forever before we dated, and who was exclusively with him for three years. Yeah, he didn’t invite me.

I almost unfriended him on Facebook for that.