I’ve never been a great beauty, and I’m not saying that to fish for compliments, so don’t. I’m not terrible to look at, but my hair leans toward “ashy” (which I think is the polite way to say “mousey”). I have thunder thighs (even when I’m relatively thin, which is not always, as I lean toward the chunky side anyway). My skills in fashion, make-up, and hair are fair-to-middling at best. All of this I know, and all of this I am ok with.

But there have been some exes who made me feel more than average.

Joe loved my eyes. He’d wax poetic about them… badly, sort-of-rhyming, and without any kind of meter, but still “poetic.”

Shane told me I was beautiful all the time– my hair, my face, ya know. Then after we broke up, he made an off-hand jab to the effect of, “You’re actually not that great. I was just saying it to make you feel better.” Oof. Part of this I’ll blame on the fact that I dumped him and he needed some revenge. But part of it, at least, I have to accept as truth.

Luke’s compliments never went much past, “You’re purdy,” but he meant it from his heart.

And Matt? Well, Matt was probably the most convincing, but that’s likely because he had the best chance of getting in my pants, and when you want to get there, you spread the compliments on pretty thick, unless you’re dumb or something.

So if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess I have to tell you I’m beautiful. I have pretty eyes and soft hair and a lovely smile. At least if you’re trying to sleep with me.

I don’t think you should commit to someone, really, until you’ve seen them at a low point. Morbid as it seems, low points are what define us.

Joe didn’t get to see my low point until he was about to head off to college on the other side of the country. The second day of my sophomore year of highschool,  I stepped  out of the minivan to walk into the building and stepped off the curb and right onto my ankle. I was wearing adorable little canvas sneakers and little bitty khaki shorts– I remember because I never wore those shoes again and I wore jeans for weeks afterwards to cover the ace bandage. (Good thing flare jeans were in back then.) My ankle swelled up and turned purple by the end of the day. It hurt like a bitch.

Joe didn’t make much of it, good lad. He must’ve realized that attention-seeking was not my bag and a softball-sized purple ankle was doing nothing to help me blend in, and I hated the whole situation. He just checked my ace bandage to make sure I wrapped it right and then chivalrously carried me up the front steps of his parents’ house so I could come in and see their new kittens later that week. So I guess I passed that “low point” test… except that he was gone about a week later and we sort of broke up by default just because we stopped talking to each other. Hrm. I’ll not blame that on my low point, though.

The first time Shane came to visit, I was on my period. He was staying in the den in the basement on the pull-out couch, just next to the downstairs bathroom, which happened to be the one I stumbled to sometime in the wee hours of the morning in search of fresh feminine hygiene items and Midol. There may have been quiet whimpering, but I tried not to make too much noise.

The next day he admitted he’d been awake for the whole thing. I was mortified, but explained the situation as delicately as I could and then blocked it from my consciousness by sheer force of will. Later that day we played some badminton in the yard and he kept asking me if I was ok, and I kept assuring him that I was fine, and I didn’t realize until much later that it must have been the midnight whimpering that set off his concern. Oops.

Still, I think I passed that one, too, because I ended up with an awkward kiss and a fantastic tickle fight.

Luke probably saw more of my lows than any of my other exes, by virtue of the fact that we spent the most time together, by far. He came to visit me once when I was sick. My mom ushered him into my darkened bedroom and he sat on the edge of my bed and murmured platitudes while I prayed to God he wouldn’t look at my hair and I wouldn’t throw up on him. He didn’t stay long and I think we were both fine with that. But he never shied away from my sickness or tears or even my foul, horrible moods.

I’m sitting here wracking my brain for a low that Matt might have seen, but all I can think of are the tearful, screaming fights and I guess that’s enough of a low. Maybe the phrase should be, “in sickness and in health, and also in snotty, red-faced rampages.” (Of course, he’s the only ex I ever rampaged at, so maybe some of it wasn’t me. Just sayin’.)

I’m glad they stuck with me through my lows– gross, bloody, and hateful though they were. Anyone who manages that gets some hindsight props from me. Hear that, boys? Fine job.

For a while when I’m in a new relationship, I remember every interaction. It sounds a little stupid to say that I guess– probably everyone does that. But I’m talking in the range of 6 months to a year before I start forgetting fights and conversations and kisses and day trips here and there.

But everything fades with time, I guess.

I don’t remember much of what Matt and I fought about, besides the old stand-bys of, “You are not being supportive,” and, “You don’t pay enough attention to me.” (Both of those were Matt’s complaints. I don’t remember what I picked fights about. Probably about how he picked fights too much, because I wanted to be able to look back on that period of my life and appreciate the irony. Yeah.) I’m sure they were world-stoppingly important at the time, but hey.

I don’t remember the middle names of three out of the four exes. I only remember Shane’s middle name because he signed it on his letters all the time and it was as much a part of his name as his first and last.

I sure as hell don’t remember their birthdays.

I don’t remember Joe’s favorite food or Luke’s favorite song or Shane’s favorite book.

But I remember the way all of their hands looked– the color and texture of the skin, the shape of the thumbs. I remember what Matt smelled like. I remember how Luke liked to be touched. I remember the cadence of Shane’s voice. I remember Joe’s laugh.

And maybe it’s not that important that I can’t remember all the little things Matt and I fought about, or the name of Shane’s sister, or Luke’s GPA. Because I’d rather save room in my brain for their hands and their scents and their laughs.

Oh pet names, you subject of much consternation. Sometimes we love them, sometimes we hate them, but somehow it seems we always manage to have them. Ok, well, maybe not always…

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Joe:

• His hair — that beautiful, beautiful curly blonde hair
• His lovely smile
• His shoulder rubs
• The way he kissed the back of my neck so very softly

Shane:

• His love letters
• His love poems (He wrote really good ones. I’m picky about love poems.)
• His slightly bawdy sense of humor
• His stories (fiction and non-fiction)

Luke:

• His reactions to everything — I always knew just how he felt
• His floppy hair
• His love notes, always featuring cartoons
• That he was friends with all of my friends

Matt:

• His openness
• His concern for his family
• His car (shallow, but true)
• The way he held me, like I was cherished

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.