The Writer

I’m in love right now and it’s completely confusing.  I always thought love was supposed to feel like a knife was getting jammed into your heart and that you were crying blood.  Is that not right?  Love with Boyfriend is carefree and easy.  It makes me wonder if all those other loves I had before him were somehow wrong.

When I was in college, I fell in love with a writer.  He was magical and mysterious.  Also, he wasn’t technically a writer – he was a college student.  But I knew he had great potential and I was completely enamored.  We spent many nights trying to make sense of the world over a bottle or two of wine.  The most baffling thing about The Writer was that he refused to sleep with me.  I wasn’t sure what to make of it, and before I knew it we were entangled in a deep emotional affair.

Due to his enigmatic demeanor, I was one of the few people who deeply understood The Writer.  His handwriting was atrocious but I could read it, because of our deep spiritual bind, so I often typed up his papers for him.  He asked me to do it because he trusted me so much.  Also, I prepared most of his meals for him since no one else knew how he liked things.  We would go for walks through the city, stumble into some quaint pub, get wasted and then go back to the dorms where I would try to sleep with him, to no avail.  IT WAS MADDENING! 

After college, I lived with him and two other men.  I figured that if we were sleeping in the same apartment every night, it would only be a matter of time before we were actually sleeping with each other.  Well this mother fucker would not budge and I couldn’t wait around forever so I started to switch tactics.  Instead of throwing all of my attention his way, I decided to show him I was desired by other men.  Thus began a parade of one-night-stands through our shared apartment.  As always, I had done it wrong.  I mean…he already knew I was slutty.  Ultimately, I had proved nothing. 

I switched tactics again and started seriously dating another man who I then moved in with!  Hooray!  Success!  I had shown The Writer that I was a responsible woman who wanted to settle down!  The problem, I later realized, is that I had inadvertently settled down with the wrong man while simultaneously moving myself out of the apartment where the man I actually wanted to sleep with resided.  DAMNIT!

At this point, I just decided to get sober.  I wasn’t thinking clearly and needed to get off the booze.  In the process of sobering up, I realized two things: 1) I did not enjoy the man I had decided to move in with and 2) The Writer had moved to Wisconsin!  So far, sobriety had turned out to be an epic fail.

I was defeated.  I knew The Writer was into me!  I knew that, if given a chance, I could show him that I was the one he wanted!  I could be responsible, and I could help to foster his extraordinary writing ability, and I could do all his typing. AND WE COULD FINALLY HAVE SEX!  But alas, the ship had sailed.  I moved on with my life and suspected he had moved on with his.  You can imagine my surprise when he called me a few years later and invited me to Wisconsin TO CELEBRATE MY BIRTHDAY!

This was it!  I could feel it.  He had bided his time like the brooding savage he was.  I should have guessed!  Of course he cared about me so much that he had waited in the wings while I got my life in order so he could swoop in and claim me as his own as soon as the most opportunistic moment arose.  IT WAS ALL HAPPENING!

I drove to see The Writer and I was glowing.  I met him at the restaurant where he was working while he waited for his writing career to take off.  Once I arrived, he immediately introduced me to all his co-worker, waitperson friends.  He was showing me off and I was in all my glory.  IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!  And he didn’t want me spending it with anyone other than him.  I regaled his co-workers with college anecdotes of The Writer and me.  I looked at the other women there and thought how sad for them that I had won.  Here was this dashing artist before them and he had chosen me.  There was one small Mexican waitress in the corner who looked particularly bereft and I thought to myself that I hoped she would find love someday…like I had.

After a while, The Writer and I left to go to our romantic dinner.  I knew we were in for a long chat and that he was going to finally tell me what he had been thinking all of those years.  He’d share that he was deeply in love with me but never thought the moment was right and that he had wanted for us to be on different footing before we started our lives together.  Before he opened his lips to speak, I was already taken.  I was going to sleep with The Writer.  He was going to tell me he loved me.  And then I was going to have ferocious sex with him.  I couldn’t wait.

He began to speak and I was beaming.

The Writer: Ali?

Me: Yes?

The Writer: I have to tell you something.

(OMG, here it comes.)

Me: Yes?

The Writer: Ya know that woman you met back at the bar?

(The weirdo Mexican woman?  Yea, what’s your point?)

Me: I think so.

The Writer: Well she’s my girlfriend.  And she’s pregnant.  I’m going to be a father.

Rage is a lot like taking a drink.  It dominates everything around me and I can’t be expected to remember anything that happens once it overcomes me.  Here’s what was happening in my head:

YOU STUPID FUCKING LOSER PIECE OF SHIT!  IS THIS A JOKE?!  YOU DRAG ME ALL THE WAY OUT TO FUCKING WISCONSIN TO TELL ME YOU IMPREGNATED SOME FUCKING WAITRESS AND THINK THAT I’M GOING TO BE HAPPY FOR YOU?!  ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME YOU EPIC DOUCHEBAG?!  HOW CAN YOU EVEN BE SURE THIS SUPPOSED BABY IS YOURS?!  SEEING AS YOU’VE REPEATEDLY REFUSED TO SLEEP WITH ME, I’D BE SHOCKED TO LEARN THAT YOUR PENIS HAS ANY FUNCTIONALITY WHATSOEVER.  FOR ALL YOU KNOW, SHE FUCKED A BUS BOY AND THEN YOU RUBBED AGAINST HER ONE NIGHT AND NOW SHE’S CLAIMING THAT YOU IMPREGNATED HER.  IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!  DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY PEOPLE WANTED TO HANG OUT WITH ME TODAY?  LITERALLY ZILLIONS.  YOU ARE A DISGUSTING MONSTER.  YOU’RE NOT EVEN A WRITER!  THE ONLY THING YOU’LL BE WRITING ARE CHECKS FOR THAT WOMAN TO FLY HER ENTIRE FAMILY HERE FROM MEXICO YOU STUPID LIMP DICK FUCK!

That’s what was going on in my head.  In all actuality, I burst into tears, paid for dinner, smoked a carton of cigarettes and made up a story about how I was immediately needed in Chicago.

I have no idea whatever happened to his horrible girlfriend and baby.  For all I know, he wrote a sweeping novel about how they both died during childbirth.  That would be just my luck.  Then I’d have to live with the knowledge that I could have been the dead wife who had created a masterpiece.