Alex, the good midwestern girl

26Aug08

I left her, standing on the alter. We’d been college sweethearts. Met during freshman orientation, but didn’t hit it off. I was drunk, she was Christian and neither of us had much to say to one another. But I remembered her and she remembered me.

Sophomore year, we were on the same volunteer crew cleaning up the campus cemetery. While everyone else was picking up empty beer bottles and pulling weeds off graves, I was collecting a bouquet of wildflowers to give to Alex.

We continued dating through the end of college and I proposed on graduation day. After two months of backpacking around Europe, we moved to Akron, where she was from, and her dad gave me a job at the family robot factory.

It was all lined up. We’d move into a quiet little craftsman, she’d raise the kids and I’d take over the robot business when her father, who insisted I call him “dad,” was ready to retire. We were going to be so happy.

But I couldn’t stand how cookie cutter our life together was going to be, so I split, at the last possible second. I hear she moved to Chicago, shacked up with some marketing exec, and had those kids she’d always wanted.

I’m glad she made it, but I’ll tell you, as I’m writing this blog entry, in a rooming house in New Orleans, that stinks of cigarette resin and dirty one-night-stands, I’m realizing I might have fucked that one up pretty damn well.

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