The Boyfriend Chronicles: Mike
The Boyfriend Chronicles: Mike
March 1996 March-ish 1997
(Originally posted 9/6/2003)
When I refer to the year I spent with Mike, I often call it the longest one-night stand of my life. Three-hundred and sixty-four days longer than it ought to have been.
I don’t really know why I went out with him. He was short and scraggly and pronounced ‘vocabulary’ as ‘vocabbilary’, as in ‘you got a real big vocabbilary’. But he made me laugh and the sex was good. Even when he made me cry, the sex was good. No matter how mad we were at each other or what else had happened, the sex was always, always good.
I don’t remember many of the details. I stayed at his place for long stretches because he always lived so far away. He was 31 and divorced from his first wife, a Korean he met while in the service. He had a big Italian family complete with all the drama, and eventually got himself a roommate in the shape of Cliffy, a large, Irish, middle-aged bachelor with no sense of smell.
Things were never really smooth for us, if I remember correctly. The first weekend was nice — we barely got out of bed at all — but it was all downhill from there. He was addicted to sports, drank a lot with his buddies and had a list as long as my arm of people and things that came before me on the priority list. And I felt it.
I tried just about everything to make it work. We started out with The Talks, which always went exceptionally well and produced no result. Then I started living with him, while keeping my own place and telling my family and friends I was staying in Philadelphia with friends during the week to minimize the commute to my nonexistent new job. I lied a lot.
I gave up all my friends because he had nothing in common with them and they didn’t like to go out drinking which was what one had to do to spend time with Mike. Maddie’s Sports Bar, the Boathouse, the Firehouse, O’Kelly’s and Bailey’s during the week after volleyball, softball, golf, basketball, hockey and more golf. Then on the weekends we’d go to the clubs downtown. They were all the same, with their loud music, crowded dance floors, overpriced drinks and horny college kids. I hated it, every single second. I was bored by his friends who could talk about nothing more than sports, TV and the latest office gossip. I was bored by the same old dramas we’d have in the parking lot about who was driving and who was leaving their car. And I was bored by Mike’s complete lack of attention to me no matter where we went.
I tried making friends with the other guys’ girlfriends, but they’d either be bitter and catty and I’d hate them, or they’d be cool and interesting and get dumped very shortly after. There was no winning. I was miserable.
I tried to leave him many times. We had notorious public blowups, like the time we all went dancing at Maddie’s and I asked Mike to dance with me. He told me no, he didn’t feel like dancing. So I danced with Cliffy. Ten minutes later, Mike was on the dance floor with a short brunette from the claims department, having the time of his life. I lost it in front of everybody. I had no clue then about how ugly public scenes were, and I’d pick a fight whenever it suited me. That night, I asked Chris to take me back to Mike’s place, where I packed my stuff while Cliffy yelled dire warnings that there’d better not be any yelling when Mike came home because he had to work in the morning. I left in tears, but came crawling back when I realized I had nothing left to go home to but an empty apartment, just like every other time I tried to leave.
I wrote him letters. I begged and pleaded. I bought sexy lingerie and adult toys and surprised him at 4 am, a cliche in overcoat and heels. I supported his sports teams, hung with his friends, made nice with his family and probably bitched about it every chance I got. At some point I was bound to boil over.
One week something happened between us at work — I can’t remember now what it was — that sent me out around the windowless back of the building in tears, then home for a few days. Whatever it was, it was more than I could handle and two days later I wasn’t feeling any better. I sat on Mike’s bed and wrote a letter to him in my diary, set it on the floor and picked up his gun. I’d been there when he moved in and had always known where it lived with its box of bullets on the top shelf of the closet. I loaded it, touched the tip of the cool silver barrel to my head and closed my eyes. I sat like that for a very long time. Then I took the bullets out of the gun, put everything back in its place and had a complete breakdown. Mike found me there hours later and when I wouldn’t stop sobbing long enough to talk, he flipped open the diary beside me. He was quiet as he went to the closet, removed the gun and re-hid it. I didn’t have the energy to tell him not to bother, that if I hadn’t done it then I wasn’t going to. Then he shook his head and left. He went to the bar with his friends and didn’t come home until well after last call.
That was the beginning of the end. Everything after that was just hanging on because neither of us had anything else. I tried to leave a few more times, but always came back when I got bored or lonely or horny. He seemed not to notice whether I came or went. I hung around eating junk food and reading escapist trash novels until I packed thirty pounds onto my 5’6″ frame, ballooning up to a size 10 and discovering cellulite on the backs of my thighs. I discovered my first gray hairs at the tender age of 23 while getting ready to pick him up at the airport from his annual golfing trip to Myrtle Beach.
It ended one day in March, a year after we’d first hooked up. We went to the Korean market and had lunch, then went back to the apartment to nap. I snuggled close and for the first and last time, he brushed me off. I got up and grabbed my bag and left. No matter what else happened, the sex had always been a constant. It was always good, always there, always satisfying. I know now that there was nothing else keeping us together, so the day that was gone, I walked away for the last time.
Sometimes I wonder if I was just hypersensitive and demanding, and if I’d just relaxed a little we would have had a good time. Then I remember six months into our relationship when my birthday rolled around. I was sitting on his lap in the switch room at work.
“Whaddaya want for your birthday?”
I rolled my eyes. I hate that question. Birthday gifts are not about greed, they’re about love and thoughtfulness.
“Just get me something that makes you think of me,” I’d said. “Doesn’t need to be expensive, just thoughtful. Put just a little effort into it and I’ll be happy.”
He looked terrified, in that deer-in-the-headlights sort of way. “Like what kind of present? Dinner? Flowers? Can’t you just make a list?”
“No, I’m not making a list,” I glared. “If after six months you still don’t know me well enough to pick out something on your own, then I seriously doubt your interest.”
“Can’t you even help me out a little? Give me a hint or something?”
“Michael,” I always called him Michael when he frustrated me. “If you seriously can’t handle buying me a simple birthday gift, then just skip it altogether, okay? This is nuts.”
Turns out he picked this one time to actually listen to me. My birthday cam
e and went without even a card.
I don’t think it was me.
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