Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me - Ben Karlin [30]
RODNEY: [Laughs]
JESSICA: I actually do remember the kiss.
RODNEY: [Laughs]
JESSICA: What, you don’t believe me?
RODNEY: [Laughs] I don’t know if I do.
JESSICA: Yeah, I really do remember, and I remember because you had a warm mouth.
RODNEY: I remember [the kiss] being . . . I remember it being kind of a little bit of a mess.
JESSICA: That you were?
RODNEY: Yeah, I’m . . .
JESSICA: Or that I was?
RODNEY: No, I remember it being a little all over the place.
JESSICA: You might be right, but I remember it being warm.
RODNEY: That’s nice.
JESSICA: And wet, but very warm, and nice warm.
RODNEY: Well that’s good. Well, I am glad [snickers] that I could help you dimly remember our kiss.
JESSICA: I recall good feelings.
RODNEY: Do you remember when you dumped me?
JESSICA: Uh-Uhhh.
RODNEY: You called me up. I remember being on my parents’ phone in their bedroom. See, I remember this stuff. I don’t have a good memory in general, but I do for this stuff.
JESSICA: Uh-huh.
RODNEY: I remember feeling that it was kind of inevitable. Like when you called me up, it was, “Of course she’s going to break up with me.” Like I wasn’t surprised.
JESSICA: Right . . . Well, like through word of mouth it probably got out there beforehand.
RODNEY: Probably so [laughs]. Like someone asked me if I minded that you broke up with me.
JESSICA: [Laughs]
RODNEY: Ummmm . . . so after that was in December of eighth grade . . . so like five months later we graduated . . . like five or six months later we graduated from junior high school and went to high school, and I remember springtime of eighth grade being kind of a really intense time.
JESSICA: Springtime of eighth grade. Big-time. Totally, me too.
RODNEY: How come?
JESSICA: Ummmm . . . I think like I was getting a handle on what was going on and meeting guys I liked . . . and meeting new friends, like people that I connected more with.
RODNEY: Okay, soooo . . . ummmm . . . so that’s kind of how I remember it too. We went out in December . . . the tail end of like a time where we were all pretty clueless. By the time May rolled around, people in our grade were having sex. And I feel like in December they weren’t.
JESSICA: Oh, isn’t that so strange? ’Cause like when you brought up the subject about kissing, I was like, what? Eighth grade? That’s all we were doing? I remember definitely everyone was doing third base and stuff.
RODNEY: Exactly. Yeah, people were starting then. I don’t remember what I did last week, but I remember the first three people in our grade that went to third base and what order that was in. You know?
JESSICA: Me too.
RODNEY: Soooooo . . . umm . . . like, the other thing I remember is you called me up and said you didn’t want to go out anymore and . . . before [we went out], I didn’t walk around like with an official crush on you. But once you made that phone call [and dumped me] . . . I had an official crush on you.
JESSICA: Right.
RODNEY: Plus, by the time we got to high school . . . you were a pretty popular girl, and when we went out I would say you weren’t as popular.
JESSICA: Yeah . . . I . . . absolutely.
RODNEY: And I remember that [when we went out] I maybe I had this sense that . . . you know, “Okay, this girl is supercute, it’s only a matter of time before this is going to end.” I distinctly remember now that during those two weeks we were going out . . . walking through [the junior high] with the really cool guys in our grade and them being like, “Aren’t you going out with that girl Jessica?” And I was like, “Yeah.” And one of them said, “She’s a kind of cute,” or whatever they would have said. I remember that I was superpsyched that the cool guys in our school were noticing that I was going out with you . . . but also being aware that, deep down, some giant mechanism was starting to click into place. You know what I mean?
JESSICA: Yes, I do.
RODNEY: And by the time, you know, the spring rolls around and you had starting going out with