Club Blue


That Awkward Moment When...I would have married him! M types into Gmail IM.

You knew him for one month, I respond.  

I could have loved him! He was perfect!

My eyes begin rolling like a Magic 8-Ball.

My writing soul mate is having a crisis. She has been dumped. Not even dumped, but pre-dumped. Dumped in the pregame show to dating; as though someone ended the Kentucky Derby by shooting a horse in the gate. Only instead of a gun, there was a Smartphone text message. Also, no oats.

I begin typing my way to an IM escape route: My connection has be—.

However, before I can tunnel into the loving, rave-free confines of my flat, my computer rings. I grumble in annoyance for several selfish reasons. Just off the top of my head, I don’t want to hear the details of a failed relationship when I have so many of my own to keep me warm at night. Also, and as we all know, it’s impossible to talk sense to a recently dumped person. And, most importantly, I was just about to put on an Oreo cookie, M*A*S*H, and bourbon festival in my living room.

The computer stops ringing and I hold my breath. Then it rings again.

Skype. I hate Skype. To answer or not to answer, that is the question.

First of all, it should be illegal to dump someone in the winter, especially if you live in a country where the average temperature is in single digits and the days are shorter than a typical visit to the bathroom. Second, even if you are in a go nowhere ‘relationship,’ staying together throughout the winter is a biological necessity. You need three things in the winter: food, alcohol and someone with whom to engage upon the horizontal hokey pokey.

If you’re alone, winter turns into a time of morbid depression, couch sores and an inflamed liver. It turns into letting yourself go, growing unruly nose hair, Křupky (Cheetos) stains around your mouth and waking up on the couch with a cat fur imprint on your sweater…for example.

Don’t be a hero, stay with the place holder.

Though this may be on my mind, I can’t say any of it for the simple rule of what comes around, goes around. We are all flogged at the altar of the relationship gods here and there, and when we are, our friends are the ones who pull us through. M was there for me last winter during my own winter dumping, when I bemoaned similar lamentations about a woman whose face is now vague and who I currently refer to as the one that gave me that cup, I think.

So I shall be there for her this winter.

I answer Skype. God damn it.

  1. #1 by Hokey Pokey Trainer on December 13, 2012 - 2:10 pm

    Great now, I can’t decide between A: chuckling over how true the place holder thing might be, or B: feeling guilty about my late-night KFC breakup rants I blessed everyone with the other week. But then again, I was stuffing myself with deep fried awesomeness, so I was probably easier to talk to than most grief-starving dumpees/dumpors. Right? … Right?

  2. #2 by Andy on December 13, 2012 - 4:50 pm

    Haha, this post brings up amusing/disturbing memories of the ghosts of relationships past. Kind of like Ebenezer Scrooge, but with boobies.

  3. #3 by Jer on December 15, 2012 - 4:12 pm

    This is reminding me of the second worst phone call I’ve ever had. Leaving Madison, WI for the final time, my life packed into my dads van, and sobbing uncontrollably on the phone while my old chef tries to talk some sense into me from his restaurant in NYC. Not a good time, but we’ve done that for each other.

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