Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me - Ben Karlin [52]
5. There exists a certain type of busty Manhattan redhead that makes the girl from those classic Tex Avery cartoons—you know the one, the showgirl that causes the cartoon wolf to spin cartwheels, shoot steam out his ears, and flail helplessly as his animated eyeballs pop out and go rolling across the floor?—look less like a comical cartoon exaggeration than an example of the Italian cinematic school known as Neorealismo. No, I’m not making this up.
Things Negative
1. That intense desire you felt to be free of your long-term high school girlfriend can turn, overnight, into an unbearable eight-month fit of jealousy, rage, sobbing, and self-pity, just by finding out, post–high school, that she has been sleeping with the pot dealer from her dorm. Who knew?
2. Falling in love with someone every other guy on campus is also in love with can make you feel better about yourself than any antidepressant ever concocted by modern science. But, you’ll discover, it also has its disadvantages—like the fact that at any given moment there are twenty-thousand-odd guys waiting to go out with her the instant she dumps you. This is a situation she will feel no compunction about taking full advantage of with no warning, whenever the whim strikes her.
3. Punk-rock drummer chicks are considered wild and unpredictable for a reason. They can fall head over heels for you, but if you aren’t up to speed, they can just as easily—mere days after declaring they can’t stand to be without you—pull a complete 180 and get back together with their ex, even if said ex happens to be on really dangerous street drugs at the time.
4. Spending the night with a fantasy celebrity woman you’ve seen on TV and looking over and realizing the decidedly male items littering the nightstand on your side of the bed belong to the major movie star she is “still in the process of breaking up with” is far less glamorous, and much more stressful, than you’d think. And being told the following morning over breakfast, repeatedly, that she “can’t wait to see you next” doesn’t mean you’ll actually ever hear from her again—even if she continues to flirt with you every time you run into each other over the next several months. Far from being an ego boost, the experience can leave you as confused about the very fabric of reality as Philip K. Dick writing his fabled Exegesis—and like him, you will never be able to convince yourself you’d didn’t just hallucinate the whole thing.
5. As talented, funny, and fabulous as they may be, sometimes flabbergasting Manhattan redheads call you up at midnight and demand you take a cab from Brooklyn to Manhattan, so they can yell at you until four a.m. about how they need to break up with you because you’re too emotionally inaccessible to make a commitment. Even if you’ve only seen each other, like, twice. What’s more, though they’ve decided they despise you with every fiber of their being, this is somehow no guarantee the relationship will actually end there.
6. There is a saying in the entertainment industry: “Faster, better, cheaper—you can only have two.” Unfortunately, this same principle applies to romantic partners, with the corresponding categories of sexy, smart, and sane. The tendency of some (me) is to go for the first two and damn the torpedoes. The consequences of doing so, however, can be more emotionally nightmarish than an H.P. Lovecraft story, crossed with a Manson Family acid trip, and directed by David Lynch.
7. That last sentence may have come across as hyperbole. Actually, it was a drastic understatement.
Things Indeterminate
1. Strangely enough, after a surprisingly brief elapse of time, you will no