Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me - Ben Karlin [74]
Case #25
It was maybe the fortieth time I’d done that fake reach for my wallet in a restaurant. We both knew I didn’t have any money. We were very young and not really in love but we liked to drink gin together and watch Star Trek reruns and eat nice dinners and later have gin-soaked post-dinner Trekkie sex. She was an extremely elegant woman. I know the Star Trek part might make some doubt me, but think of the body and poise required for those uniforms. I’m not saying she wore one. It’s not my place to say that.
She was witty and warm. Worst of all, she had money, and I had none. At the time I preferred to view it as “dining out on Star Fleet’s tab,” but I still wonder what made her buy me a really nice dinner thirty-nine times and then on the fortieth suddenly snap, say, “You know what, I’m sick of you reaching for your wallet like you have any money in it, and I’m sick of buying you dinner and gin and I’m sick of driving you around everywhere, even to go hang out with your friends without me, like you’re my kid and you’re in kindergarten or something. So I hope you enjoyed that sushi because I’m cutting you off. We’re done. We’re not going to see each other anymore. And yes, I’ll drive you to Steve’s house now.”
Why did it happen at that dinner and not another? Did it have something to do with the Star Trek reruns being on hiatus for a few weeks? Again, there is much to explore, but my scientific hunch is that there may be what can only be called a “tipping point” at work here, by which I mean precisely that: a point where it was incumbent upon me to offer to pay the tip. By my calculations I believe this occurred at dinner #38. Duck confit.
Case #13
Due to reasons I still cannot quantify, it is often the end of a relationship that allows one to register its prior existence. During junior high I was “going out” with a girl who made me put my finger in her all the time. That was our big activity. I didn’t even do that much with my finger. We’d stare in each other’s eyes and not kiss, and then I’d put my finger in her. She told me to never talk to her around other people.
There was a class trip down to Washington, D.C. It was supposed to be the highlight of the year. The lead teacher on the trip, Mr. Matossian, told us it would be the “greatest experience of our lives.” He made it clear that by the “greatest experience of our lives” he didn’t mean our lives so far. He meant this would be the peak of our lives, and that everything after this would be pain and disappointment.
We were quite excited. The year before, according to rumors, a boy had been arrested for defacing the Lincoln monument with a turd doodle. The cops, Lincoln fans, beat the boy with phone books. Only because Mr. Matossian had certain contacts in the law enforcement community was the boy released without charges. We were all eager to be beaten with phone books and then rescued by Mr. Matossian. I was also eager to put my finger in the girl the whole day’s ride down to Washington. She made a big announcement about how she couldn’t believe she had to sit next to a loser like me, but she’d also brought a blanket and as soon as our bus pulled out of the ShopRite parking lot, I went to work. The trip turned out sort of boring, but that was by far the greatest bus ride of my life. Maybe that’s all Mr. Matossian meant.
But a strange thing happened afterward, or rather, the next fall, when we attended high school. We suddenly weren’t doing that thing with my finger anymore. We lost contact with each other. I asked her what had happened, but she seemed not to hear me. She looked at me as though she’d never seen me before. At first I wondered if I was witnessing the onset of some kind of cognitive dysfunction, but it later occurred to me that, against all scientific probability, or at least in contradiction to my limited sense of these matters, she had been, in fact, using me. After further