Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me (3 page)

Lesson#3

Beware of Math Tutors Who Ride Motorcycles

by Will Forte

Her name was Michelle and she was my first serious girlfriend. We had met at a fraternity party one night and somehow, during the course of that evening—aided no doubt by generous portions of cheap beer—I tricked her into liking me. That first meeting turned into a first date and then another date and then soon, she and I were boyfriend and girlfriend. How had I lucked into this? I was dating an attractive woman who didn’t care that I dressed like a slob and had a bowl cut and drank myself into oblivion every third night. It was paradise.

One weekend, I went up to Lake Tahoe for a ski race. After a day of getting my ass handed to me by superior ski racers, I was in a bit of a funk—and there was only one person who could cheer me up: my beloved Michelle. As this was pre–cell phone and the rotary phone at our condo was locked, I convinced the team to drive by the local grocery store pay phone. My call went to her answering machine, but that was okay—I had a plan. I offered Michelle three different times to wait by the phone for a call from me later—8:00, 10:00, and midnight. Satisfied, I jumped in the van and took off for dinner.

After dinner, I convinced the team to swing by the grocery store again. I called Michelle at 8:00 on the nose and once again got her answering machine. No big deal. She was probably at dinner or something. With two-thirds of my calling options still available, I hopped back into the van and headed back to the condo.

I returned to the pay phone at exactly 10:00, dialed Michelle’s number, and once again got her answering machine. Again, no big deal. In fact, I should have seen it coming. 10:00? Michelle wouldn’t pick 10:00. She’d pick midnight, for sure. She’d want my voice to be the last thing she heard before she went to sleep and dreamed sweet dreams of the two of us sharing our lives together. What a romantic! I walked away from the pay phone, smiling.

By midnight, everyone was pretty drunk. Everyone except me. I mean, somebody had to stay sober enough to drive me to the pay phone. Eventually, a few ski teamers figured out the reason for my sobriety and I caught a considerable amount of shit for it. The general consensus was that “Forte’s pussywhipped!”—a charge I vehemently denied. But deep inside, I knew they were right.

I got to the pay phone at 11:50, had a ten-minute fake phone conversation to fend off any would-be phone users, then finally at midnight, jammed my quarters into the coin slot and dialed. “Ring . . . ring . . . ring . . . ring . . .”

“Hi . . .”

“Michelle?”

“. . . this is Michelle. Leave your name and number at the beep.”
Beep
.

Fuck. She must be down the hall in the bathroom or something. I hung up and tried again. Again, answering machine. I hung up and waited for five minutes. Again, answering machine. Shit, was she okay? Should I call her parents? Maybe she was in a car accident or a library mugging. Was this a valid 911 situation? Wait, maybe I should commandeer the ski team van and haul ass back down to Los Angeles? Soon, the rational minority of my brain took over the irrational majority and I realized there was probably a very good reason she didn’t answer the phone. The next morning, I found out this reason.

“Oh, I went to dinner with friends.”

“Thank God. I thought you were hurt or something.”

“Sorry, no. It was just a late dinner,” she explained. “And then I went out for drinks after that with Steve . . .”

The name Steve hung in the air for what seemed an eternity.

“. . . so I didn’t get your message until this morning.”

Hm. Steve? I’d never heard of “Steve.” And they went out for drinks? Alone? I mean, couldn’t they have talked some others into joining them? I had so many questions to ask Michelle about Steve, but didn’t know how to ask without sounding like an asshole. After a long pause, I finally found the perfect way to word my concerns:

“So . . . uh . . . Steve?”

Michelle sighed, as if she knew I was going to say that. “Relax, Will. We’re just friends.”

“Hm . . . Okay, that’s good enough for me.”

It wasn’t. As we got off the phone, I wondered about Steve. Was he some tattooed clubber guy? Was he on a collegiate sports team? Would a representative for a modeling agency approach him on the street and give him their card?

I walked back to the van and, in a jealous mini-rage, slammed the door hard enough to provoke a “Trouble in paradise?” comment from one of the ski teamers.
Could be, ski teamer,
I thought to myself.
Could be.

That night, I slyly asked Michelle all about Steve. I didn’t like what I heard. Apparently, Steve was a blond-haired, blue-eyed surfer. He was nice, smart, and funny. But nothing scared me more than the information I found out next: Steve played bass for a popular campus band called the Brewmasters. Oh, great, a fucking musician. When pressed, Michelle admitted that she found Steve attractive, but claimed she didn’t think of him in “that way.” As I went on with my questions, Michelle became annoyed. Didn’t I believe her? They were just friends. Steve was helping her with her studies. If anything, he should be thanked—I mean, the more solid grasp she had on her math theorems, the quicker she would do future math theorem homework, and the quicker she could meet me for romantic date nights at local taco establishments.

“Sure. You’re right. I’m sorry.” But I wasn’t sorry. Deep down, I knew the truth: Steve was not a man to be thanked. Steve was the enemy. Their friendship had to be terminated, and it had to be terminated quickly.

I immediately began trying to fill Michelle’s calendar with events. I figured any open time could potentially be “Steve Time.” I’m pretty sure Michelle knew something was up. I had never been a big planner and here I was suddenly planning 6:45 coffee dates and 9:15 campus strolls. But even during this barrage of scheduling, Michelle carved out a little study time with Steve—all the while insisting they were just friends.

The next week, Michelle and Steve increased the frequency of their study dates. I was not happy, but with finals approaching, I had to admit there was some validity to this “studying” alibi. So I hunkered down—soon finals would be over and Steve and Michelle would have nothing more to study. Michelle would be all mine once more.

During finals week, Michelle and I saw very little of each other. I was busy learning an entire quarter’s worth of history in a four-day period. She was preparing in her own way, via late-night cramming sessions with Steve. Michelle called me after her last final on a Thursday night. She was going out to celebrate with friends. Would Steve be among those friends? The answer was yes. I cringed. But there was nothing I could do. I had a history final the next day for which I was hideously unprepared. I tried to block it all out as I dove into my textbooks. And for a while, it worked. But then there was a knock at my door.

“Dude, I think I just saw Michelle on the back of some guy’s motorcycle.”

I rushed to the window to see Michelle standing next to a motorcycle across the street from my fraternity. I hurried out of the house and ran across the street to her.

“Hey, Michelle, what are you doing here?”

“Steve forgot something at his apartment.”

Just then, Steve bounded down the stairs.

“Will, this is Steve.”

Steve was incredibly nice:

“Oh hey, man! Great to finally meet you! Michelle told me all about you.”

But nice in the way people might be nice when they’re having sex with your girlfriend.

“Hi, Steve,” was all I could offer. Then we smiled at each other for a long time. Was this as weird for them as it was for me? I had to say something to break the silence.

“So you live up here?”

“Yep.”

Steve pointed to his apartment—across the street from my fraternity house. I thought of all the spying I could have been doing the past several weeks. More awkward silence.

“Well, we should get going.”

I reluctantly agreed. “Yeah, I should get back to studying.”

With that, Steve kick-started his motorcycle and Michelle hopped up behind him. As she reached her hands around his waist, I died inside a little. I walked back to my fraternity, bolstered by the support I got from my brothers.

“Dude, he’s totally gonna plow her.”

“For your information, he’s very good at math and he’s helping her with that.” I wanted so badly for it to be true I almost had myself convinced.

That night, as I should have been studying, all I could think about was those arms reaching around his waist. I thought of the same thing happening in a bar—her arms reaching around his waist as he was ordering her a fifth Corona. All night, I kept waiting for Steve’s motorcycle to pull up across the street. I’d feel so much better when I saw him get back and walk up those stairs to his apartment, alone. But the motorcycle never came. Maybe he parked it somewhere down the street or maybe it broke down somewhere and he walked home that night. Maybe it was totaled when he foolishly tried to jump a hundred parked school buses in the middle of the desert.

The next morning, I went to class, shat out my test, and ran back home to call Michelle. Finally, she answered.

“Will, we need to talk.”

And with that, I knew it was over. I went to her apartment and we started the proceedings. The first part of the breakup featured some pre-breakup small talk. (It’s bad form to launch directly into the meat of the breakup.) Next came the “airing of grievances” phase in which she listed the problems with our relationship. I have to admit, she made several strong points. Next came the rebuttal phase in which I went through a long list of things I’d be happy to change to make it work. She took this into consideration. Next came the actual breakup. This part was oddly short. And then suddenly we were no longer boyfriend and girlfriend. But there was still one last phase that was very specific to our breakup. I’ll call it the “Are you with this Steve guy now?” phase. And this must have lasted like, a half-hour. But she insisted she was not. She and Steve were just friends. And you know what? Maybe she was telling the truth. I had no proof to the contrary. All I had was a mountain of circumstantial evidence and a very strong hunch. We parted ways.

That night, while everyone was celebrating the end of the quarter, I just sat in my room, alone. After several hours of wallowing in self-pity, I was interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Dude, Michelle just showed up across the street on the back of some guy’s motorcycle.”

I ran to the window and sure enough, there were Michelle and Steve, back from God knows where. Why did this guy have to live across the street from me? Hadn’t they tortured me enough? I watched Michelle follow Steve upstairs and disappear out of view. I wondered what the hell was going on up there. Were they really just friends? I’d never know.

Or would I?

I grabbed my binoculars and ran from room to room, looking for the perfect vantage point. Finally, on the third floor, I found one—a direct view into Steve’s apartment. Sure, the curtains were drawn nearly all the way shut, but there was a two-foot opening that I was able to peer into. That was all I needed. I stared into that window for four solid hours looking for anything—a kiss, a hug, a caress—anything that would prove they were more than what they claimed to be. But I got nothing. Well, okay, not nothing. I saw Michelle walk by the curtain once, fully clothed, and about an hour later I saw Steve walk by, also fully clothed. Eventually I gave up and went down to a bar and got drunk with friends.

The next morning, I saw Michelle walk down the apartment stairs in the same outfit she’d been wearing the night before. She hopped on the back of Steve’s motorcycle, reached around his waist, and drove off down the street. Later that day, I called her and told her what I had seen.

“How many times do I have to tell you, we’re just friends!”

After that, I would see Michelle leaving Steve’s apartment in the morning on a pretty regular basis. And occasionally I would run into her at parties. I would always ask her what was going on with her and Steve. Her story never changed: she and Steve were just friends.

Eventually, I moved on to other failed relationships and forgot all about Michelle and Steve. I did, however, run into Michelle a year ago at a store in New York. She’s doing great: mother of three and happily married to . . . Steve.

There’s an old bit of kitchen wisdom that says you should always marry your best friend. Well, to this day, I can’t think of anyone who was a better friend to Michelle than good ol’ Steve.

Lesson#4

Persistence Is for Suckers

by David Wain

DECEMBER 3 — 11:45 a.m.

In my apartment, on my couch. I take a deep breath, dial Debra’s number, and press SEND. RING . . . RING . . . She answers.

DEBRA

Hello?

ME

Hey! It’s David Wain. I met you the other night at that party?

DEBRA

Uh-huh?

ME

You gave me your number, we talked about hanging out this week?

DEBRA

Okay . . .

ME

Remember I sat on the plate of cupcakes and had to take off my jeans? And we laughed, and then we made out?

DEBRA

Oh! Yes! Cupcake Guy! How are

you?

ME

Good, good. Jeans are washed now, so that’s over.

I start flipping channels on my TV while talking, hoping it will make my voice sound casual, like I don’t care too much.

ME (CONT’D)

So do you want to grab a drink sometime?

DEBRA

Sure, that’d be fun!

ME

How about tonight?

DEBRA

Perfect! Let me know.

ME

I’m letting you know now! Let’s go to Bar Six tonight for a drink, say at eight?

DEBRA

Cool! Leave me a message and we can figure it out.

ME

No need. Just meet me there at eight.

DEBRA

Great. Keep me posted.

I hang up, slightly confused. But psyched.