For Axm Magazine, February, 2006
My ex was born on Valentine’s Day, a very, very long time ago. He popped out, some glaciers thawed, and eventually amphibians crawled ashore. I think the wheel was invented during Jeff’s puberty. He avoids California, fearing an earth tremor might rearrange his surgically-implanted plastic chin while dislodging his glass eye, making him look either traumatized or like Latoya Jackson, which are kind of the same thing.
Jeff maintains, he eats protein and sleeps through conversation, so motionless he appears fit and rested. But because a strong wind flips his toupee, when I visit him in Chicago we’re almost always indoors, surrounded by dim lighting, avoiding laughter because smiling cracks the plaster. I’m afraid to breathe, worried that sneezing near Jeff will result in his disappearance, blowing him away like fairy dust, leaving only a pile of pale blue cashmere and Botox.
I’m not bitter that our romantic relationship ended. After all, I dumped him. OK, it was mutual. Alright, he dumped me, happy? But I’ve worked through my issues, and I drink, so I’m completely numbed by our ‘evolution’ to friendship. I’m just angry that every time that dreaded holiday occurs on February Fucking Fourteenth (FFF), Jeff expects me to send him a card that celebrates his birthday and another that honors the most heinous, horrific holiday for any single, thinking person.
Lovers strolling through the streets, throwing rose petals over one another, buying little chocolate covered hearts and Hallmark cards that say, “I love our kind of love.” I detest that kind of shit. Even when I was in love, I was suspicious of any holiday that uses naked babies armed with dangerous weapons as its mascot. Cupid? How about jailbait? I already get hard over diaper commercials. When mum is caressing that soft, pink bottom, I usually pop a tent, then spend two therapy sessions working through those evil feelings. Why then torture me with a floating, murdering naked infant as well? Of course his arrow is sharp. Were I to invite him home for a bit of target practice, I’m looking down the barrel at twenty to life. I’m only mixing my metaphors because I’m passionate.
And why should I exchange Valentine’s Day cards with an ex anyway? It’s creepy, we’re done, it’s over, he’s hired a personal trainer which reminds me that it’s amazing that a boyfriend gets in shape after he dumps you, as if you were holding him back from being the best He that He could be, instead of the fat, bald, blind fuck he actually was for SEVEN SLING-SWINGING YEARS!! This vodka is not working.
In the blushing Valentine he sent me last year, Jeff told me he’d never stop loving me, even if he falls for someone else. That’s great. Now I feel like he’s peed around me to mark his territory. He still introduces me as his lover, because he thinks ‘ex’ sounds negative, and it is, in the traditional Latin sense of the word, meaning ‘before’. Otherwise it sounds like we’re still together, which is disorienting, and I wonder if we ever broke up or did I imagine that Jeff threw an iron at my head and kicked me out of our flat in LA during a major heat wave. It’s like when Jimmy Carter is identified as President Carter in interviews, and I’m thinking, Wait, is he still president? Did Reagan happen? And AIDS? What year is it? Where am I, and why do I have a remote control in one hand and a loaded gun in the other? Love, even ex-love, is very disconcerting.
I insistently remind Jeff that we weren’t together for ten years, and we only lived together for three, and we’re monogamous for two, if we don’t count the time he bare-backed a tiny black pianist in Laguna Beach, the cunt. Where’s the FFF card that says that? Where’s the card that says, in bold letters, ‘YOU RUINED MY LIFE’ with maybe a watercolor of Auschwitz, because that’s how our life together felt. Like I’d been tortured and threatened with gas, only to be released so I could be blamed for everything wrong that happens over the next several decades. Oy, where is a mass grave full of Jeff and all his buffed-up, bronzed, preternaturally pert workout buddies when I need one?
I’ve tried to date other guys, but when FFF appears I freak out, knowing somewhere in Chicago Jeff is bench pressing his way into a flight attendant’s groin, while he brags about all the women he’s fingered and all the hearts he’s broken. He’s never been dumped, and like any vain Aquarian, Jeff’s powers, whatever they are, engorge while Cupid cruises, as he ropes in several lovesick sheep, while I receive a Valentine from my mother. Cue: Pathetic.
Maybe this year, her card will tell me she’s a lesbian. She’s at the conversion age. Her husband is inert, and if Oprah is right, Mom’s clit still works. Do they make a Hallmark card for that occasion? It would have to rhyme. “Hey there pal, I want a gal.” Or maybe something more direct. “Here’s the catch, I want some snatch.” Then, in curly cursive, “Mom”.
Now that would be a holiday card worth receiving.