Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me - Ben Karlin [4]
Molly was a brilliant girl, and translated that brilliance into acceptance to no less of a prominent Ivy League institution than Havrard University. (I have flipped the third and fourth letters of the school’s name to further protect identity.) This is where things started to fall apart, as Molly became increasingly obsessed with the notion that she, with her love of deconstructing wordplay in French poetry, was much smarter than me, with my love of deconstructing the comedic premise behind David Letterman wearing a suit made of Alka-Seltzer. One night we were making out and listening to XTC’s “The Mayor of Simpleton,” the lyrics of which are a plea from an idiot to a brainy girl along the lines of “I may not be well versed in any topics that would gain me admiration among the intelligentsia, but the one thing I DO know is that I love you.” Delighted, Molly pointed out to me, “Aww, it’s a song about us!” At the time I took the comment in the spirit of playfulness that was likely intended. But years later, looking back . . . Jesus! What the fuck was that? More importantly, what the fuck was wrong with ME that I was so willing to put up with a girlfriend who repeatedly hammered into my head that I was a dumb-ass?
Being a brainless troglodyte, I ended up in Madison at the University of Wisconsin. My existence became an endless blur of dorm-room keggers, advocacy journalism, and focusing my abnormally large reserves of vitriol on fellow students dumb enough to be vexed by the question, “But is it art?” Clarity only seemed possible during the times when Molly and I would visit each other. As these dorm-room visits were the first time we had access to unsupervised beds, we’d spend a lot of time sleeping together. Though for us “sleeping together” was merely the next logical step on our path toward sexual intercourse, as opposed to a euphemism for it. The mere insertion of parts into other parts would have seemed anticlimactic after an evening spent solving the Gordian knot of balancing two sleeping bodies on a single mattress, waking up with severely restricted blood flow in at least one limb, and overlooking each other’s post-Chinese-food morning breath.
As magical as those visits with Molly were, the time spent apart from her became that much more unbearable. This wasn’t helped by the fact that Molly was acting totally unreasonably at her new school, engaging in conversation with guys who weren’t me and attempting to join social groups that weren’t made up of me, me, and me. On some Friday nights she would even choose to attend a book club or act in a play rather than sit alone by her phone waiting for my sobbing call. How could one girl be so heartless?
Our dance of dysfunction and lack of sex continued throughout our freshman and sophomore years. We called the whole thing off more times than I can remember, and usually for reasons that were entirely my fault. The ratio of time spent long-distance dating to time spent long-distance broken up gradually decreased, until we agreed to acknowledge what geography had been screaming at us for months: we were no longer together.
The spring of 1991, my junior year, was an exciting time. I had a dorm room to myself, I was drawing a well-regarded daily comic strip for my school paper, and Our Troops had just finished kicking Saddam’s ass in the first Gulf War, setting the stage for the peace in the Middle East we enjoy to this day. I had moved on from Molly and was a better man for it, though my inexperience with sex was starting to be a problem. The girls I dated wanted more than a smooch and a boob kneading to top off their night. “We should wait until we’re ready,” I’d declare, usually succeeding in convincing potential partners