“I know, right?” I replied, plopping down on the couch with an issue of Spin.
My punctuality wasn’t the only sign that something was very wrong. All day, I’d been in that weeping-over-the-steering-wheel-for-no-apparent-reason state and stuffing my face with fistfuls of Reese’s pieces.
I could tell you all about the red flags that had been sprouting up like mushrooms in a moldy basement for the last couple weeks of our relationship, but we can cover that in another post. For now, let’s get right down to the most ridiculous breakup ever known to Man Eater kind.
New Dude got dressed and joined me on the couch.
“I’ve never seen your hair tucked behind your ears,” he said.
“Oh, yeah, sorry about that,” I said. “I was so busy making buns for my reading tomorrow that I didn’t do anything with it.”
“I like it,” New Dude said. “You’re not hiding behind your hair. It’s a new level of cuteness.”
“You don’t have to say that,” I said with an eye roll.
“But you are.”
“Hiding?”
“Cute.”
“Oh.”
What happened next was so pathetic, I’m hesitant to even share it. Whatever. I hope someone out there in cyberspace gets a chuckle out of this.
New Dude told me he’d finally downloaded some apps on his phone and thus spent the entire day on Facebook. Previously, I’d applauded his procrastination on getting Internet access at home. With the history of e-affairs during his marriage, I, for one, felt safer.
“Facebook is the devil’s playground,” I’d warned him when we first went out. “Unless you have bonafide business reasons to use it, don’t go on there.”
Another reason to avoid Facebook: it makes the most articulate, mature adults behave like teenagers. Case in point: A local female radio personality accepted New Dude’s friend request but had ignored mine...twice.
En route to New Dude’s house that night, we’d been mud-slinging via text about it.
NEW DUDE: I told BFF I love it when she plays Motorhead…that’s probably why I got "in". Is this going to be a sore spot between you and me?
ME: No...it just supports my theory that she approved your friend request because you’re a "fan", whereas I’m that bitch that blogged about Diesel Jeans DJ.
NEW DUDE: I don’t know that everyone is out to get you. I think you need a penis to be her buddy. I have four mutual friends. All guys.
ME: I have one hundred and thirty-three friends in common with her, and there’s an equal amount of men and women. And for the record, I have 700 more friends than her.
(Hey, I'm not immune to the immaturity infection spread by Facebook!) Now, face-to-face, New Dude told me he’d wished BFF a happy birthday on her wall.
“And she ‘liked’ it,” he bragged with an inappropriately large grin.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“To show you that I can get influential friends that you can’t.”
“That is really fucking malicious.”
“I’m going to send her a message asking her out for coffee at Nina’s,” New Dude continued, name dropping his favorite cafe (that he had yet to take me to!). As horrified as I was by this confessional diarrhea, it was as un-ignorable as an accident scene. I didn’t really want to know, but now that I’d gotten a peek, I couldn’t pretend it wasn't there.
“You were going to ask her out?” I said.
“Yeah.”
My initial reaction was sort of retarded.
“But that’s not even business related!” I gasped.
“What's the problem?” New Dude asked. “I thought it would be cute. Or funny.”
“Funny how?”
“Just to see how far I could go,” he said.
“That’s not funny to me,” I said.
“It’s not like I'm going to fuck her,” he said.
Oh, I knew that would never happen…because past experience shows that men who e-cheat are too pussy to follow through and deliver the goods in 3-D.
I narrowed my eyes and tightened my lips. I was beyond pissed.
“Watch you step,” I said through gritted teeth.
“What is that supposed to mean?” New Dude asked.
“Exactly what I said. Watch. Your. Step.”
Looking back, even I can almost laugh at this. New Dude was so out of the loop that he didn't realize that if he so much as sneezed on BFF, I'd find out about it. The Twin Cities is that small.
But that was beside the point. I can--and have--put up with a lot of shit, but dishonesty and deception are deal-breakers. I’d already been on high alert for infidelity since New Dude confessed a week prior that a former flame of his had been reading the blog and filling his ear with bullshit about how I was bound to break his heart.
“If you have any questions about what’s going on,” I’d said. “Ask me. I'm an open book. Literally and metaphorically!”
New Dude had said he didn’t have any questions…and really, why would he? I'd already told him everything, from the booty call I’d recently rejected to the concert invite from an ex-boyfriend that I’d accepted. And while I am known to flirt up the wazoo, it's usually because I want something career-related to come of it. (No pun intended. Seriously!) As I've had to state more times than I'd like to lately, I'm a professional.
But New Dude isn't. And since he doesn't have a blog to justify his behavior, it really irked me that he was keeping heated conversations like the one with the former flame a secret. He claimed he was preventing me from getting upset.
Fellas, let me introduce you to a little thing called women's intuition. We know when you're messing around long before you admit to it. My bullshit meter had been going berserk on a regular basis…and without an obvious cause, I’d been blaming my moodiness on everything under the sun. Until now.
Our BFF argument was suddenly interrupted when my phone trilled with an incoming text message. As I responded to the rescheduling request from one of my upcoming Rock Star Guest Chefs, New Dude picked up his phone, too, and started texting.
As soon as I set my phone down, it trilled again.
Are we going to be one of those couples that texts each other while we’re in the same room? read the message. It was from New Dude.
I must admit, that was kind of funny. For a millisecond, I forgave him and we spent the next two hours trying to chillax whilst ignoring the ginormous pink elephant (otherwise known as BFF) in the room.
Finally, foreplay began. Half of me wanted to get laid; the other half wanted to torture this a-hole for fucking around with other women on Facebook all day.
In the end, I decided to multitask...meaning, I pulled the pancake act. New Dude knew exactly what was up when I turned listless and silent on the sofa as his digits plunged into my pussy.
After a few minutes of my unresponsiveness, New Dude breathed into my ear.
“I want you to suck my cock,” he said.
“Then get on top of me and stick it in my mouth,” I replied. I was not going to lift a finger to assist in his orgasm.
New Dude did as he was told…and then he fought back. He fucked my face, thrusting harder than ever before. He wasn’t just getting off, he was working out some serious demons. With a mouthful of cock, I couldn’t exactly tell him to stop. I tried to clue him in to my discomfort by pushing back on his thighs, but the force did not let up. When he finally let me come up for breath, hot tears stung the corners of my eyes. I turned my head so New Dude wouldn’t see me weep, but he noticed right away.
“You okay, baby?” he asked as he brushed a hand over my face.
Readers, I have never cried during sex before. And I sure as hell wasn’t about to let down my guard now. I rolled off the couch and began the familiar ascent to the bedroom. New Dude followed. When we reached the landing, he said, “We don’t have to finish this if you don’t want to.”
I was on the brink of shutting down altogether, but a body is a body and when the mechanics are well-oiled, everything works, regardless of anger.
I motioned for New Dude to assume the position on the bed. For the first time since the BFF conversation, I made eye contact with him.
“I can still get off even if I’m having emotions about other things,” I said.
New Dude didn’t argue. I got on top and rode him cowgirl style ‘til I came. Five times. And let me tell you, I relished those orgasms like never before…because I didn’t know how long it might be until I felt that good again.
Afterwards, New Dude tried to cuddle with me, but I had already begun my transformation into Ice Queen. We’d fucked and now I just wanted to get the fuck out of there.
When Danger Mouse & Sparkle Horse’s “Little Girl” came on the radio, I took that as my cue to leave. Before I walked out the door, New Dude handed me a loaf of blueberry bread he’d baked that day. It was all I could do not to catapult the five-pounder right back at his head.
“I’m sorry about BFF and the coffee invite,” New Dude said as he kissed me goodbye at my car. “But you’ve really done a 180 on me tonight. Tell me what else I did wrong.”
I smiled sadly and shrugged. I didn’t know that we were breaking up yet. I wasn’t even pissed, per se. I was scared. Scared about what he might do under the guise of being “cute” or “funny” with other women. Scared about what other online dalliances he’d had and kept from me. Scared that he would break my heart well before I had a chance to break his.
I can’t remember if New Dude said he loved me before I drove off into the night. He’d said it several times thus far (more often than not during sex, which I didn’t think counted as no man is in their right mind when aiming for an orgasm) and I’d yet to say it in return.
It’s not that I hadn’t felt I was falling in love--I most definitely was--but every time I was “supposed to” say those three little words, they got stuck in my throat and never made it past my lips. Now it seemed New Dude wouldn't ever hear me say them.
When I got home, I meant to go straight to bed…but New Dude started blowing up my phone. I skimmed the "I'm sorry" messages but didn't respond. The "I'm a broken man, please be patient with me, baby" act is beyond stale. I'm done with fix-him-uppers.
Before I slipped between the sheets, I decided to taste New Dude’s bread. It was almost as if I was letting his baking abilities determine whether he would get the boot or not.
Should I let him save face? Nah. The bread was dry and far from sweet enough. I took one bite…and didn’t even bother to swallow. It was that bad. I threw the rest of the loaf in the garbage. (Honey, keep your day job. Please leave all culinary and seduction ventures up to me.)
The next morning, I woke up and though I was terrified to attend my first Man Eater reading, I knew I had to face that fear alone. I had to do it because on some level, I knew that New Dude and I were through. I had to prove to myself that I was still strong, even if I was suddenly single again.
I told New Dude, via text, to skip my professional engagement that day. Then I went online to unfriend and block him. The irony that Facebook, the same portal responsible for us originally meeting had instigated the breakup, was not lost on me.
I'll save you the boring back-and-forth that occurred later via e-mail. The gist of it was that New Dude felt like he couldn't measure up, socially speaking. (Sexually, he was just about perfect. I will miss that about him for sure.) New Dude was uncomfortable with me being part of the "in" crowd of Twin Cities artists while he'd been holed up in hick town for years.
"Did you ever think that one of the things I like most about you is that you're not part of that crowd?" I responded.
Finally, I told New Dude I needed to cut off communication because further dialogue was going to leave me unfulfilled.
And then I hopped back to square one in the dating game…but for the crucial 72 hours post-break-up, I was far from alone. On Sunday, I met up with Courtney McClean and The Dirty Curls to read a jaw-dropping essay on anal sex, then attended a performance by Matthew Inkala, where I met his girlfriend, Maria, who generously lent me her ear to dish about the breakup. On Monday, I rocked out to Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes with an ex, who then whisked me off in his convertible to Common Roots Cafe for a grass fed beef burger (heaven!!!). And then...
Pause for the ecstatic memory...
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
On Tuesday night, I found myself glowing, giggling and gossiping at a wine bar with not one, not two, but three sexxxy rockstars!!!
I'm keeping that delicious story to myself. For now, enjoy this recipe for Breakup Pancakes. They’re from a mix…which is as close as Man Eater will ever get to cheating.
BREAKUP PANCAKES
Ingredients
2 cups Aunt Jemima Buttermilk Complete pancake mix
1 ½ cups water
Method
• Grease skillet with cooking spray. Heat over low-medium heat.
• Combine pancake mix and water in bowl; stir with wire whisk just until lumps disappear. Do not overmix.
• Pour batter by the ¼ cup into skillet. Cook until bubbles form across surface; flip pancake and cook second side until golden brown.
• That’s it. So simple, there’s no way to fuck it up. Unless you happen to be New Dude.
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