When Sloan called, our three-year, scorch-the-earth relationship had been in the rearview 18 months. I’d high-tailed out of Chicago with nothing but the clothes on my back, a hotel bible and an iPod with a broken screen, that only seemed to shuffle between Huey Lewis & the News songs. Spent two weeks kicking in my old college roommate’s toolshed in Seattle. Once clean, I caught a Greyhound to Tucson to work construction for my half brother. Met Alison, a nice PhD candidate in sociology, at my book club. After a few months dating, I shacked up with her and her precocious nine-year-old, who I thought was just swell. Everything was just swell. And then the phone rang.

“Hey, KD. It’s your favorite model-turned-actress.”

“How’d you get this number?” I asked.

Alison, still asleep, didn’t seem to stir. 2:37 a.m. on the digital clock. I took the portable phone into the bathroom.

“I’m just leaving this party at the Chateau Marmont and I’ve been thinking of you a lot.”

“Again,” I said, “how did you get my girlfriend’s home phone number?”

“I don’t remember, but my thumbs been hovering over the ‘call’ button for a couple months. I’m in a limo. My limo. I’m feeling strong right now, so I thought I’d reach out and touch you”

Chills.

“I have to go. Please don’t ever contact me again.” I hung up and went back to sleep.

Sloan had gone from catalogue model to indie film darling, from whiskey shots to freebasing heroin, and from love of my life to enabling banshee, all with the speed of a mainline. I never noticed she had a stronger constitution for it all than I did. So, while the near overdose and the cutting and the infidelity and the smashed hotel rooms and the assault charges (eventually settled out of court) and the sudden appearance of paparazzi all terrified me, it only emboldened Sloan. She was invincible. I’d barely escaped with my life.

Two nights later, she called again.

“Don’t call here. I can’t take it,” I said.

“Come to LA. No one will ever need you like I do.”

Holding the phone, I stared at myself in the mirror of my girlfriend’s bathroom. I had permanent bags under my eyes. Too many ill-conceived tattoos. 20 extra pounds of dough around my waste. Thinning hair. No talent. No prospects. Dead end jobs forever. I knew she was right.

“Send me a ticket, baby.”

I arrived in LA and immediately bought a cheap pair of sunglasses. I felt ready for anything.

Once in her suite at the Hotel Figueroa, I was met not by her, but by her publicist, a mod with a rectangular haircut, who had some forms she wanted me to sign, something about confidentiality. I didn’t bother to read them. “Where’s Sloan?” I asked. I was assured she’d be up soon.

Sloan’s arrival was oddly formal. No deep embrace. No kiss. No vases smashed against the wall. Just a peck on the cheek. Maybe it was all the suits surrounding us, as we sat down around the coffee table.

“Knox, thank you so much for reprising your role,” she said.

“Role?”

“Yes, we’re thinking it will take 6-8 weeks, wrapping up just in time for the premier of my next film, culminating with a physical altercation between you and me on the red carpet. Don’t worry. We won’t press charges. And the arresting officers will also be in on it. Are you still on the wagon?”

I was too confused not to answer. “Um, yeah. Seventeen months.”

“Great. Good for you. In that case, when we get caught on tape smoking meth together, we’ll use stage meth. At least for you.” The room erupted with laughter.

“So, you don’t want to get back together?”

“Like actually get back together? Is that what you thought? No. This is strictly for the cameras.”

I considered asking to get taken back to the airport. If I was home by that evening, it would be like I’d never left. But I wouldn’t be the man who’d left that morning. I wouldn’t be able to get back into that gear. After a few moments, I sighed heavily.

“So when do we start?”

Photo Credit. Alex Dram, used under CC license

If you have to ask, then that means, yes.

“It doesn’t have to be,” I say, “I don’t have anywhere to be until this afternoon.”

We’d met at a reading I’d organized the night before, called ‘The one who got away.” I’d read a story about impotence, the first week of college, and watching girls you liked turn harlot. Fiona said she’d been moved, which meant she was either lonely, depressed, crazy or all of the above.

We walked to a taco stand and got tacos, which I offered to pay for, but Fiona demurred. “You don’t have to pay to prove you’re a gentleman.”

We sat by the river and ate, in dehydrated silence. Despite not showering or brushing her teeth, she smelled lovely, which is more than I could say for myself.

As we prepared to decouple, she gave me her email address. “Phones are for people in a hurry,” she said. She wasn’t joking, so I didn’t laugh, but she did smile and I smiled back. I’ll never write you.

A few days later, I emailed to invite her to my next reading night, “The one who stuck around,” where I planned to read a story about the girl who gave me crabs.

At the reading, at a tiny little performance space, which had formerly been a smog shop, I was relieved to see her arrive, shortly before I read.

After the reading, several cases of Tecate were brought out. The writers mingled with the audience, who were mostly friends of the writers, or writers themselves. There were just enough attendees to make the reading feel like an actual happening, instead of a support group.

Again, Fiona was drawn to me and again I wound up going home with her.

In the morning, we got green smoothies with extra antioxidants at a chain juice joint in a strip mall.

“Would you ever go out with someone like me?” she asked, sweetly.

“I’d have to think about it,” I said. “I’m not sure I’m ready to join a club that’d have me as a member.”

“Well, I was just asking out of curiosity. There’s no offer on the table.” I couldn’t tell how to take that.

I had to go to work, so she walked me to the bar where I worked 2 shifts a week, commiserating with regulars about wasted college degrees and skeptically eyeing randoms that wandered in during our unhappy hours. I thought about her my whole shift. It’s a small town, I figured. Maybe a groupie for a girlfriend wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe that’s just what I needed.

That night, The Hard Feelings, one of the few rock bands in town, were playing a gig at a different bar. I missed their set, because I was still working, but figured I’d hang out for the post-show. Maybe there’d be some sort of jam session.

I ordered a Tecate and a whiskey, and saddled up next a friend, a writer from my reading series. “How’s it going with your groupie,” He asked.

“Oh, you know, it’s up and down.” I tried to do that thing where you look like you’re trying not to smirk, but you can still see the smirk underneath. It looks cool if you get it right.

“I take it tonight’s a down.” He gestured to Fiona, over in a booth by the stage, necking with the bass player from the Hard Feelings.

At least it gave me an idea for the next night of readings. “The one who wasn’t there.”

Photo by Joseph Gray. Used Under CC License

After graduating, we lost touch for quite a while. But a couple years back I received an email that said she wanted to be online “friends.” I threw my smartphone against the wall out of excitement. The screen shattered. For a year or so, we exchanged the occasional message, which turned into me planning an impromptu trip to visit her in London, where she was working as a TV producer for an art program.

She looked better than I remembered, as her online photos did her little justice. Zero signs of aging, more intense of a gaze. She had no idea that the trip was specifically to visit her. I’d told her I’d been planning a trip for a while, to catch some theater, visit some old friends, reclaim a little of my youth (which, technically speaking, was all true).

We met for lunch near her office the day after I’d arrived. She was 15 minutes late, giving me ample time to sweat every little detail. I went over a list of conversation topics in my head to the point where they were no longer interesting to me. I also had half a bottle of Beaujolais to myself. When I stood to greet her, I knocked over my glass of red wine, somehow getting it all over me and all over the white tablecloth. That, it turned out, was the high point of our date.

My conversation topics, mostly art related (LA’s art scene, what I was currently collecting, a couple new documentaries, etc…), were all immediately dismissed. “I simply cannot speak about art, it reminds me of work”. Hilde mostly wanted to gossip about people who I didn’t remember from college, who were either divorced and ruined or rich and happy. None were interesting. When I tried to broach the subject of my schoolboy infatuation with her, she immediately began talking about her ex-husband, who she also met in college. It was a mood killer, which only a second bottle of wine could revive.

“Well, Knox, it was absolutely wonderful catching up. Enjoy the rest of your trip. And do keep in touch.” And with that, she sauntered off to her office and I meandered to the nearest open pub.

When I woke up, I was on Hilde’s couch, in a nicely appointed living room, beneath a blanket, pantsless. Hilde was typing on her computer in the kitchen. The clock said it was 1:15am.

“Looks like somebody’s finally awake,” she said, not looking up from her laptop.

“Ughh. How did I get here?” I asked.

“The pub called me. I was the only person you said you knew in London, and you were apparently causing quite the scene. An angry, vomit-ey scene.”

“Did we sleep together?!?! Why aren’t I wearing any pants?”

“Because you shit yourself, Knox.”

And with that, all the reasons why Hilde was out of my league were, once again, crystal clear.

Photo Credit: Dejan, used via creative commons license

Greta looked over at my pile and acted mock horrified, eyes spread wide. “Wow. You mutilated that one. That’s, like, all stem now. Completely unsellable.”

“Shit.”

“It’s ok. I won’t tell Micah,” she said. She slid closer and took the next giant stalk of weed from my pile. Her bar shoulder brushed against my arm and sent a warm shiver. “You’ve got to carefully focus just on the leaves surrounding the bud, without hurting the actual bud. Think of it like you’re undressing a woman. Take her clothes off one at a time. You try to rip them all off at once, you’re libel to take a boob off with them.”

“Like a woman. Ok. I can do that,” I said. “And for the record, I’ve never so much as left a bruise on anybody’s boob.”

“Then you should be a natural, Romeo.”

Romeo? For a moment, I panicked, and wondered if my reputation had preceded me, but then I realized under no circumstances would my history of unhinged romantic entanglements have come up between Micah, my friend/seasonal employer and Greta, this unbelievably cute acquaintance of his. Oh, and you’ll be working with my friend Knox, who gets his heartbroken by, like, every girl he meets would have come nowhere near their conversations. I calmed myself.

The next night, we sat by the campfire, and chatted with the other trimmers. I played it cool, trying to involve myself in others conversations, or engage Micah to retell his drunken army stories, but I kept finding myself back in conversation with Greta, much to my delight. We talked about the organic food truck she was trying to start in the Bay Area, about how I was trying to find myself after my import company had imploded, about how trimming a little bit of weed up in the woods up Humboldt County was a fine way to drum up some cash, but was no way to live.

We stayed and watched the fire slowly pass on, long after everyone else had gone to sleep. There was a moment, where our conversation, which had quieted to near whispers, found a natural break, and we sat there, in sweet eye-contact, each half smiling.

“This would be a perfect moment for me to kiss you, but it feels a little too obvious, huh?” I said.

She turned her smile to full. “Yeah, I never was much for convention.” Without even a peck on the cheek, she fell asleep in my arms.

Greta left the next day, and told me to email her when I made it down to Oakland, which was supposed to be in a week or so. I was feeling really good about her, like maybe she felt the spark, too.

The next week, after a 9-hour greyhound and 2 hours wasted, lost on BART, I arrived at my friend Hank’s house in Rockridge and went immediately for his computer.

G-

I’m in the bay area. I think we should hang out as soon as humanly possible.

-K.

I went on an allnight bender with Hank and when I got back, in near black out, I checked for Greta’s response, which was equally succinct.

K-

My boyfriend just got here from Memphis, and he doesn’t think it’s such a good idea.

-G.

It was a likely story, but nonetheless, I tossed Hank’s laptop against the wall. Here’s to being obvious.

Photo via Aztlek, licensed under creative commons license.

As I sat down, I pulled out my notebook, and started writing haiku, specifically about who I thought Kim might be.

Out of town woman

Never feels like a tourist

She lives where she is

Grad student dimples

Smiles when she thinks about

All her friends shit jobs

I wasn’t even on to the third one, when I caught her looking at my notepad, and traded her a sheepish smirk for her quizzical half smile. She’d been heading to Paris, from Denver, to visit a friend, but volcanic ash over Europe had stranded her at JFK two days ago and it was unclear when or if she’d be able to continue her trip.

“My college roommate who I kind of hate is letting me stay on her couch. We were maybe going to go out tonight,” she tells me over a cup of earl grey in the MoMA cafe.

“I think I’m still trying to get over my big ex, but I also might be in denial about whether or not she was my big ex or not.” I tell her over dinner at a-hip-corrugated-iron-table-snout-to-tail restaurant in Williamsburg.

“This isn’t who I think I am,” she tells me as she removes her tank top back at my apartment.

“This isn’t who I think I am, either,” I tell her in the morning, when I catch her looking at herself in my closet mirror. “This isn’t who I want to be either.” I convince her to stay with me until her trip resumes. She obliges, though maybe only because she really doesn’t like her old roommate.

“Is this just a meaningless fling?” She asks me, out of the silence, as we walk down the boulevard, holding hands. I don’t answer immediately.

“This doesn’t feel meaningless to me,” I say, breathlessly, as we make out furiously outside of my brownstone, “and it doesn’t have to be a fling”. She pulls away, a bit, and her eyes kind of water, and she makes this barely audible whimper that absolutely melts me, and I pull her close and hold her.

“I want to come to Denver,” I tell her, over a grapefruit breakfast.

“There’s something kind of perfect about you, like you mix a joyful sensibility with a deep melancholy in like, the most perfect way…..” I whisper to her, right as she’s drifting off to sleep.

She turns to me and says, “Knox, I’m going to see my boyfriend in Paris tomorrow. My flight came through.”

I stare at the ceiling and wonder.

Photo Credit

(via .)

(via . )

Brett had recently moved back to the city from Madison. Her sister, Meredith, had been depressed, maybe suicidal, and her parents were freaking out. She’d gotten a gig substitute teaching middle school Spanish and didn’t have that many friends. She had simple tastes and liked that I jammed on steel guitar on Sunday nights at the Wheel.

That first week we dated, I saw her 4 nights: Thai Food, Women’s College Basketball Game, Art Museum, and the film Night and the City at Park Cinema (she didn’t like it). The next week, it was six nights. The Japanese Museum, The horsetrack, a couple nights in with videos. Third week, I think we might have had 7 dates in 7 days (If you count morning-after coffee). Out of nowhere, I was in a serious relationship.

Then, all of a sudden, it dropped down to 3 days. The next, it was only two. “It’s my sister,” She said, “I don’t like to leave her alone.” I didn’t especially worry about it. I was just lonely. Until she started seeing someone else.

“I’ve, kind of been seeing someone else,” she tells me. A co-worker. She met both of us around the same time and now she didn’t know who she liked better. The part of my brain that relishes competition was tweaked.

“Alright. That’s understandable. We never had any sort of exclusivity discussion. But I want a chance to beat this guy. To prove that I’m better. What’s his name?”

“Um.. Darryl.” Fuck this Darryl character, I thought. Walking back to my house, I began planning a date to swoop her off her feet. A private screening of Bonnie and Clyde, in a hidden garden up in Hendrix Park. Followed by a homecooked barbeque meal. I had it all planned out in my mind.

It never happened, though. Darryl was with her later that night, when Meredith commit suicide. He was the shoulder she cried on. He was the one who took care of her. And he was the one she fell in love with. Timing, they say, is everything.

Most of all, I come out a sense of respect. Many of these friends of Bill W, every day, when they wake in the morning, the first thing they have to think about, even if they’ve been sober for years, is “How the fuck am I gonna get through today without drinking myself to blackout?” The disease metaphor is so apt. It’s a chronic sickness, and I identify with it. No, my I don’t consider myself an alcoholic. I may be a heavy drinker, but it’s not my defining characteristic. You see, at my core I’m addicted to heartbreak.

I can’t help but set myself up to get knocked down. I’ve sworn it off a hundred times, but it’s never worked. It’s who I am. What fuels it? Maybe my mom disappearing, maybe something innate, my need for fuel for my nonexistent artwork. If there were a 12-step program for it, I’d sign up for it. But even if there were others like me, the program would never work, because we’d all fall for each other and then we ‘d wind up hurting ourselves. And then what are you gonna do? Go back to meetings? There’s no respite. All I have is this goddamn blog and it doesn’t work either. So, yeah, AA meetings are a nice diversion, while I avoid more serious life-hurdles. I recommend to addicts and non-addicts alike.

(via 1 2 3 4)

Dear ex-boyfriend,

Happy birthday.  I wish I could send this to you.  I miss you.  I have been dating… a lot actually and every one of them makes me miss you.  They all are missing something… and I think I know what it is.  They are not you.  They are either not as funny, not as smart, or don’t have a beard, or don’t know our inside jokes.  I know this is totally unfair to them.  How are they supposed to make up for the comparison to a 3 year relationship?  I don’t know, I think that I will never be able to let any of them in.  I don’t know that I want to.  I wish I could forget about you.. I wish that so many things did not remind me of you.  I went to the baseball game and I swear I turned around and thought that you would be next to me.  How sad is that?  How stupid am I?  Every time I think of you I hate myself a little more.  I am planning on leaving Michigan to get away from our memories.  I cannot take it.  I can’t stand only being 10 minutes away from you.  I cringe every time I come to your city.  I cringe when I see photos of you.  I cringe when I have to do things that I thought we would be doing together.  I hate being there and you are not.  I cannot wait to get out of here.  I hope it will ease the memories if I am not constantly around the things that we did together.  Sometimes I hate hearing songs that remind me of us.  I have to skip a lot of songs on my ipod.  The one that you gave me.  Even when I hear new bands or songs I think man I wish I could tell you about this band, I think you would like them.

You know someone asked me recently if I am a man-hater now or bitter when I told them that I had been in a three year relationship that ended as our did.  I was taken aback.  I don’t think I am.  But maybe I am, maybe I am flawed… I don’t know if I was before we broke up or because we did.  Maybe it is why we broke up.  I hope that one day I can be fixed, but I think not.  I think I will wonder the planet visiting different countries alone and still be the same screwed up person I am today.  Maybe, though I will eventually be okay with it.  Maybe one day I can look back and be happy for the time I had with you.  I don’t think so though.  My life feels odd now, it is not grounded.  I feel aimless.  Even though I have goals, I feel like I am floating around without being able to concentrate.  I make up things I want to do but I am lost.  It is odd to realize you have nothing to share with anyone.  No one to care just about you.  To share intimate details with.  You could be happy and I won’t know.  I wanted to be happy with you and now it will not be.  You will live a separate life and continue on without me.  That kills me.

Some days I succeed more than others.  But more often than not something triggers a memory of you and I am back to square one.  I wish I could send this to you.  I wish that our last conservation didn’t end like it did.  You saying you hoped it wouldn’t be our last one and me hoping as well, but knowing it would be.  Sigh.  I hate this.

Bozeman was disappearing behind us. I’d found a cassette of Springsteen’s Nebraska at the last Texaco. The close-to-setting sun was painting the sky a sentimental color. I should have felt great. But then Stella had to come in and ruin the moment.

“How can I eat it?” I say. “One bite at at time, like anything else.”

“You don’t think about where it comes from at all?”

I take a melodramatic breath and look over at her. “I only eat jerky when I go on road trips. But, I ALWAYS eat jerky when I go on road trips. And no, I try not to think about where my food came from, really ever.”

“Well don’t think you’re going to be kissing me with your pepperoni breath.”

“I’ll pick up some gum next time we refill. Will you kiss me then?” I said.

“Depends on the flavor.” She says, in a way where I couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not. Jesus, I thought, only 1200 more miles to Chicago.

Stella worked at the café in Seattle where I had been writing my TV pilot. We had a charming repartee most mornings, and I always looked forward to seeing her. She’d ask me questions about how the series (based around a group of environmental terrorists in the mid-90s) was developing and I’d ask her questions about art school.

I’d never thought really thought any of her flirtations were serious until one day, when I brought a female friend, a former development person at Showtime, to the café to go over what I’d been working on. Stella’s demeanor was immediately cold, and she glared at my friend with the hateful eyes that only a jealous woman can summon. It was at that point, I thought to myself, ‘hmm, maybe that café girl is into me.” 

Our first dates were agreeable enough. We saw a friend of hers’ jazz combo and a friend of mine’s book reading. Reasonable, chic restaurants, where we went dutch on the bill (we were both starving artists, to some degree). And I still went to the café and flirted with her every morning, except now, I had a secret. As I set up at my regular table, with my laptop and triple americano, I’d look around at my fellow cafefolk and think to myself, smugly, “Yup. That’s right. I’m fucking her.”

Outside of Bismark, we get into an argument over Israel, of all things.

“I guess I just never took you for the self-loathing Jewish type of girl, who wears a ‘Free Palestine’ shirt to piss off her parents.”

“Yeah. That’s exactly it. I don’t support the terrorist actions of an illegitimate state to oppress 4 million refugees because daddy sent me to private school. Nail on the fucking head, Knox.”

“Listen, I’m sorry. Can we just agree to disagree about this? Some of my best friends in the world I NEVER talk about the middle east with, because it’s too sore a subject.

“Fine. We’ll agree to disagree. Do you mind if I plug in my Ipod?”

“Go for it. Just no more fucking rap. I already have a headache.” And with that, she put on a Tribe Called Quest playlist, and sang along to every word.

Our fight over my roadtrip to Caleb’s wedding should have been a warning flag, I guess. I’d assumed she would be able or want to come. It was only 10 days notice,  and there were no affordable flights. I was excited about going alone, frankly, and it’s not like we’d been dating all that long, but Stella blew up that I didn’t think to invite her. “Baby,” I told her, “I figured you wouldn’t be able to get 5 days off and I dunno, long-haul roadtrips just didn’t seem like your cup of tea.”

When she wound up quitting to come along, I was exhilarated. Maybe I’d underestimated her, and she had fiery impulsive streak. Maybe, I thought, this relationship was more than just a nice diversion, but something I could sink my teeth into.

She wakes up as we approach Minneapolis. “Hey, are we there?”

“What? Oh, no. We’re in Minneapolis. It’s another six hours.” I say.

“Fuck that. If you can’t get us there in four, I’m breaking up with you.” And giggles to herself, as she curls up to go back to sleep.

I grip the steering wheel tight and up sink deep into a fantasy meeting another woman at the wedding, and driving back to Seattle with them, instead. After the wedding, I wind up leaving without her, heading up to Montreal instead of Seattle. How she got home, I may never know.

Hey Knox,

I recently got a text from an out-of-town-fuck-buddy, who says shes going to be in my city  next weekend. Normally, I’d be really excited about seeing her, but I just got serious with someone else, and I don’t think it’d be appropriate to hang out with the out-of-towner, who is going to have some obvious expectations. I don’t know whether I should cop to the fact that I’m seeing somebody, or if I should just avoid her outright. Any thoughts?

Well, that all depends.  Are you trying to do the right thing or have your cake and eat it too?  Because it goes without saying that if you hang out with her, something will likely happen.  If you must see her, I recommend being upfront with the fact that you have a girlfriend because these sorts of lies have a way of coming back to haunt you.  Just when you think everything is fine and you’re past your past’s indiscretions, bam – you get blindsided by the truth on some idle Sunday morning.  Next thing you know, everyone is in tears and your Les Paul is getting thrown out of your fifth story apartment that you just signed a two-year lease for, with none other than the woman who now hates your guts.

Obviously (well, I maybe not to you) the conventional wisdom, or morality, is that you should be honest with your girlfriend and your out-of-towner, and if you’re just straight up, things will pan out as they should.  However, if you must be sneaky, at least tell your partner in crime what’s going on.  In other words, do damage control when it comes to your web of lies and deceit.  Otherwise you’ll all end up running into each other randomly and extreme awkwardness will ensue.

I doze for another six hours. When I awake, my head throbs. The summer heat in my basement apartment is already unbearable. I limp to the kitchen, pull a bottle of vodka out of the freezer and try to recall last nights bender.

It started at an old colleagues book release party. Well, to be honest, it started in this very kitchen, hours before the party, with the first half of this very bottle of vodka, listening to ‘Diz and Getz’ on repeat. I arrived at the party already drunk, but in a classy, jolly way, not belligerent. I don’t recall any outbursts, or disapproving looks. In fact, I believe I might have been in fine form.

There were a couple of women who caught my eye – a leggy brunette with a loud laugh and a small Asian girl, with a sarcastic streak. I vaguely recall speaking with both, and now that I’m thinking about it, I remember feeling like the Asian girl might have gotten in a cab with me.

After another swig from the bottle, I put it back in the freezer and lumber to the bathroom, where I wash my face with cold water. As I’m about to take a piss, I realize the seat on the toilet is down. That’s odd. I haven’t ate a thing in four days. Then, I notice a condom wrapper in the waste basket. Did that Asian girl come back here last night?

I retreat to my bedroom and look for clues. It’s a filthy mess, so it hard to say if I brought anyone back.  I notice two wine glasses on the bedside table. Wow, I think, you’re full of surprises, aren’t you, Dupree? I sit at the foot of the bed and try to piece together anything else. Did we maybe wind up at a jazz club. I have a vision of myself dancing.

I look at the floor, and amidst the clump of dirty shirts and half-read mystery paperbacks, there’s a small handbag. The contents are less than revealing – a compact, a tube of lipstick, maybe $45 and an expired, Florida drivers license. Her name is Andrea.

I dial information. They have neither a listing for Andrea here, or at the Miami address on her license. At the library, where I use the internet these days, I search for her for three hours, but nothing comes up.

A couple days go by and I constantly wonder who this woman is. I’ve been one-night-stranded before, but the mystery associated with this instance in paralyzing. I contact everyone I knew at the party that night, but no one knew who she was.

Her ID stays in my pocket for the next month, as I hope to run into her again, aware that, as time goes on, I’m less and less likely to recognize her. Every short, sophisticated Asian woman I pass gets a second glance from me. I remain faithful, though, that I’ll find her. Whatever connection we made, I want to rekindle it.

I certainly would like to know who she was, whether I’d actually be attracted to her if I wasn’t black out drunk. But I mostly want to know who I was when she met me. Why was I attractive enough to come home with, but repellant enough to never want to see again?  I’m desperate to know what kind of man she thought Knox Dupree was, because, if I couldn’t remember, there must be some truth to it.

Unfortunately, I never find out.

I can’t go too deeply into the details of my absence (yet), but let’s just say I had to go abroad, abruptly, and didn’t have the time to backlog the site with entries. Upon returning, I dove headfirst into a very time-consuming book proposal, and neglected my online readership. Rest assured, the Heartbroke Daily hasn’t ended, there will still be new posts by me and fine submissions will be posted as they come in (Please send submissions). However, the frequency of posts will be less regular than most are use to. My apologies -  I recently lost an intern to alcohol poisoning (rubbing alcohol poisoning, that is) and my copy editor remains irritated over a comment I made to his ex-girlfriend at a bar, so he hasn’t been returning my calls.

Needless to say, I have been buried under my workload. However, I will be revitalizing the site, posting more, and hopefully interacting with you all more. Please keep your subcriptions, keep checking back for new posts and keep looking for love, romance and intimacy wherever you’re least likely to find it.

Lovesick for life,

Knox Dupree

I’m not sure what a “normal” reaction to breakup is when you’re a 12-year-old girl, but I do know hers was pretty fucking weird.  She and a few friends got on the Internet and researched voodoo rituals, particularly voodoo dolls, and they created a little Knox doll that, I heard, was abused in untold ways.
I don’t think much of Santeria when practiced by adolescent white girls in a small, American city north of, say, Jackson, MI.  Still. . . there’s something unnerving about a gaggle of one’s peers trying to castrate him through supernatural means.  Just thinking about it made me uneasy.  I had a couple of terrible dreams, too – somewhat of an adolescent reverse-wet dream.

Walking past them in the hallways, they’d snicker among themselves and I’d feel creeped out.  Even hurt.  But most of all, I was annoyed.  I mean, c’mon—we only “went out” for a few weeks.  We kissed in the back of a YMCA van.  She was a terrible kisser, which made me mostly uninterested in whatever else she was bad at, and besides, her mom looked like Michael Jackson, from the cover of Thriller.   I don’t deserve this shit, damnit.

Much to their—and I suspect many others’—chagrin, the voodoo rituals didn’t work on my man parts.  It sure would have made adolescence easier if they had.  And I often get to wondering what my life would have been like if I lacked the ability to please a woman.  Certainly, you wouldn’t be reading this now.
But I digress.  Years later I saw Bernadette at a bar in Los Baños, CA, wasted drunk and groping at an uninterested sailor.  After she realized it wasn’t going to happen, she turned to me.

“Hey, do I know you?” she slurred.

“Can’t say you do,” I said.  “The name’s McCoy.  Just passing through the area and thought I’d check out this fine little town.”

“Heh.  You’re a funny guy, Mr. McCoy.  I’ve been trying to leave this dump for years.”

I guess I can’t blame her for not recognizing me.  It had been 20 years or so and I had accumulated a few scars along the way.  I humored her for a few minutes, until she went to the bathroom.  I drew a picture of a voodoo doll on a bar napkin, wrote, “So long, Bernie,” and then I left that smear of a town.

Lilly didn’t seem much different from the rest of my students. At least, at first. She was small, introverted and seemed to harbor an inordinate amount of undirected rage. Midway through the year, though, she turned in an assignment on future goals entitled, “Why My Life Sucks.” When I started to read it, I thought, ‘here we go, again.’ The story however, wasn’t about adolescent melancholia, but was supposedly written in MY voice, about my own dissatisfaction with life.

The next day, after a surprisingly lively discussion of Fitzgerald, I asked Lilly to stay after class.

“Is this about my essay?” she asked, once the class emptied.

“What do you think?”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying make fun of you, or anything. I, like, just thought it’d be interesting to delve a little into you, as a character. I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings.”

“You actually hit the nail on the head, Lilly,” I said. She looked up at me. “Which generally hurts more.”

I forgave Lilly for the paper, but told her she’d have to write a new assignment, as I couldn’t, in good conscience, give her a grade for a spot-on examination of my psyche.

“Go to a city,” I said. “A big college in the city. The more you can expose yourself to, the more you’ll learn. And you just won’t have that in some podunk college town.”

I fantasized about kissing Lilly more times than I’d like to admit, but had the decency to stop myself.  At least I think it was decency; it could have been just self preservation.

Lilly ended up getting into Columbia and she left in August.  She sent me updates of her life, which I happily read and responded to, my heart all a pitter patter.  When she came back to town the following summer, we met up for coffee again and discussed how lame college students are.  We took a walk through the park where she presented me with a bottle of ’82 Margot she’d stolen from her father.  We drank it from a brown paper back and threw bread into a duck pond.

“You ever feel like you were born at the wrong time, Knox?” Lilly asked, making a bit of a pass at me.

“Lilly, I don’t even know when I was born,” I said.

Lilly wrapped her arm around mine and laid her head on my shoulder.  We watched the ducks, sipped from a bottle worth a semester of my salary and thought of what things could have been like.  And that was enough for me.