I Hope You're Happy Now

I Hope You're Happy Now

Apr 18

I only hesitated once.

I was packing the plastic bag full of dog shit, bits of the stuff trapped deep under my fingernails, and I wondered: was it really worth it? Did she really deserve this? More importantly, would she really stop calling and e-mailing and stopping by unexpectedly if I tossed a steaming bag of dog shit at her front door?

It’s worth a shot, I figured as I hurtled the bag. It certainly couldn’t hurt to try.

The next day.

“Why are you doing this?”

Susan, my ex-girlfriend’s best friend, is sitting across from me, toying with the beads of sweat on a bottle of beer. I don’t respond to her question, so she continues staining the silence.

“You know, she has no hard feelings. She really wants to be a part of your life.”

“I know,” I reply. “She keeps calling me. E-mailing me. Stopping by unexpectedly.”

“What’s wrong with that? It’s been three months. She wants to be friends.”

“I don’t want to. I want to cut her off. Burn the bridge.”

“She won’t let you do that. She refuses to let that happen.”

I’ve already got my coat on as she says this.
“Well, maybe she should let it happen.”

Of course, the message light on my answering machine is blinking when I get home. Isn’t that always the way?

“Hi, Steve…it’s Susan…I’m at the bar, and I’m wondering when you’re gonna show up, if you’re gonna show…”

Delete.

“Steve. Mike. If you’re not busy nursing this insane obsession with making Danielle’s life a living hell, could you call me? We should hang this weekend.”

BEEP.

“Steve…”

My heart stops, as usual. Just for a second, though. Mercifully–or not so mercifully, depending on where you fall on the issue–it continues beating eventually.

“…It’s Danielle…”

She’s been crying. I can tell. This hasn’t stopped her from calling.

“…I found the job you did on my door. I just don’t understand. I don’t want to call the police, and I don’t think I will…”

Go ahead. Call them. A restraining order would do wonders for our relationship.

“…I just wish I could talk to you. I don’t understand why you’re doing this…please call me, okay? We don’t need to be like this. I don’t understand.”

Click. BEEP.

She broke up with me on a Sunday morning. It was one of those unexpected dumps, the kind that hits you like a punch in the gut. No, scratch that–they hit like a kick in the nuts, one that you replay over and over in slow motion as the lonely days wane away. Every time you see it again in your mind’s eye, you wonder if the ending will be different. You hope that maybe your nuts will escape unscathed. But they don’t. The foot shoots up, and BAM. You just got kicked in the nuts by someone who used to love you.

“I don’t think we belong together,” she says, rolling away from me on the bed.

BAM. Ouch. Do my nuts really deserve this?

“Why?” A stupid question. There’s not an explanation she could give that would satisfy, short of something like “You have three testicles growing from your forehead and I want a normal life, not an existence lived in a freak show!” Worst of all, it’s a question asked with the implicit understanding that no answer could satisfy. She may as well not speak at all.

So she doesn’t. Wrong answer.

“Then I guess we’ve been living a lie,” I retort after a few seconds. Swiping lines from “Seinfeld” is not usually my idea of sardonic wit. But I figured it would hurt. It did.

“Fuck you.” She’s not sardonic either. She’s just crying, afraid. Sad about sadness, the way you feel when you’re staring loneliness in the eye and there’s nothing you can do but to take its hand and walk away.

At this point I have some sympathy building for her, some understanding. All I really need is space, and I’m sure I’ll be fine. We all need that after a break-up, time spent far apart. Forced distance makes the heart grow numb. Cold truth for an unpretty day.

“I still want to talk to you, though. I don’t want to lose you from my life.” Now she’s turned toward me again, her auburn cheeks shiny with tears. Her eyes are damp, and the light that pours into them from the lamp next to my bed forces them to life. There’s light playing in her hair too, dancing around as she moves her head to readjust herself on my pillow. I want her desperately now, in that sick way you want somebody when they’ve just kicked you in the nuts.

“I don’t want to lose you either.” I stroke her hair as if to sweep the light out from it and sprinkle it onto the floor. “I would never want to lose you.”

The rest proceeded along predictible paths–the anger, the weeping, the last pathetic embraces–until she packed up her bag and took home the extra toothbrush. That, as they say, was that.

What you think you want and what you really want, deep deep down inside of you in a part you don’t even realize exists most of the time, are often two very different things. That’s what I learned in the weeks following the break-up. I could convince myself that I wanted to speak to her again, that she still had a role in my life, but it would just be a con job. Living a lie.

She would call me then, starting about a month after we broke up, and start inane conversations. At least once a week.

“Hi, Steve? It’s Danielle. How are you. I’m good.”

Blahblahblahblahblahblahblah. You can grow so indifferent to someone you used to care about so deeply. It’s funny, but it’s true. It feels like freedom.

“Hey Steve. What’s up? It’s Danielle, naturally…”

Heard that one already. Last Tuesday, and the Friday before that, and could it really have just been yesterday that she called my machine and I let it answer because I knew it would be her and I’ve convinced myself I never need to speak to her again?

“Steve, c’mon. Just call me. I thought you said…well, I guess it doesn’t matter what you said. If you’re not gonna call, you’re not gonna call. I wish you would, though.”

BEEP. Delete.

Ignoring her phone calls was easy enough, until she inaugurated the senseless drive-by. There I’d be, sitting in my underwear trying to turn scrambled cable into pornography, when the doorbell would ring. Because I’m an idiot, I’d change the channel, do a quick paranoid check to make sure the curtains were closed, slip on my pants and answer the door.

It’s that last step that’s the idiotic part. Sure enough–and I swear to you, this happened at least three different times, and every single time I happened to be masturbating, it’s like she knew my schedule–it would be Danielle at the door. Every single time. Telemarketers don’t have that kind of timing.

She’d be standing there, always looking away as I opened the door. Then she’d turn her head, and these moments would always play out in a sickening slow motion. It’d be like that Bo Derek scene in “10,” though her hair never could move with that much sex. I’d feel my heart slurp in-between my toes, and it would all be over.

“Steven,” she’d say, looking in my eyes with a nasty hope, the kind of hope that breeds hope in some sick way. Slutty, cheap hope. “I’m glad you answered.”

But I wouldn’t be glad, and after the second visit, I finally realized the truth: she was out of my life forever, and that was fine with me. By the third drop-by, I wasn’t even answering the door.

It was over an ugly mess of beers at Mike’s place that the plan first formed, a joke at first, but serious soon enough.

“So she keeps leaving messages,” he asks as he tosses a bottle down seven stories to the sidewalk. We’re on his roof. Alcohol plus heights equals safety last. “What’s the big deal? You don’t have to call her back.”

“I don’t call her back,” I reply, answering with my own bottle. It shatters into shards that fly for twenty feet. “But I don’t want to hear from her. I’m sick of her showing up at my apartment. And I don’t think ignoring her will do the trick.”

“Then do what you usually do,” says Mike, staggering dangerously to his feet and stepping back toward the stairs. “Treat her like shit. Be an asshole.”

“What would that accomplish? Why be mean?” I’m still in my “caring, sensitive man” phase. I don’t want to be mean, really, I don’t.

“Well, if you were mean enough, in theory,” he replies, stepping back to the edge of the rooftop and spitting, “she might give up and never want to speak to you again. Then you’d be happy again.”

I buried the idea and forgot about it. What a preposterous notion. Launch a hate campaign against an ex-girlfriend just because you want her out of your life? How cruel would that be? Besides, who has the time for a good hate campaign these days?

Then I met Randy. RANDY. That’s his name. I laugh out loud when I think of it…”Randy.” She left me standing alone with my bruised nuts cupped delicately in my hands, and she found a new guy named RANDY. The only Randy I respect as a real man is “Macho Man” Randy Savage, and even on him it’s kind of a pansy name. The name fits with this Randy, though. He is a pansy. I know because I met him, against my will, when I ran into Danielle at a bar.

“HEY, Steve!” Her voice cuts across the noise in the crowded bar like rusty scissors across a scalp. I shoulda ran, but I turned, forcing a weak grin onto my face. “Steve! Come over here and say hello!”

She’s standing there with this absolute tool. She’s wearing a black microskirt, a tight blue sweater and her Elvis Costello glasses. It would have to be the Elvis glasses. Nothing turns me on more than Elvis glasses, and it’s just my shitty luck that she happens to be wearing the glasses when I bump into her. Maybe “luck” isn’t the right word.

“Steve, it’s so good to see you,” she says, only she’s not lying. She really believes it. “How have you been? I haven’t talked to you in ages.”

“I know,” I shoot back, kinda staring at the floor, kinda staring at her cleavage. “I’ve been busy. With other things.”

“Right.” She takes a swig from her beer, then almost spits it up. “Oooh, I forgot. You two haven’t met yet. Randy’s met so many of my friends already that I assume everyone knows him!”

That’s just marvy, hon!

“Randy, this is Steve. I used to date him.” We shake hands. His hand is clammy, the grip flaccid. I’m no Schwarzenegger, but I could break bones if I wanted to. He’s that scrawny.

“Nice to meet you,” Randy says, with a look that delicately balances between disgust and indifference.

“Yeah,” I reply, then turn my head quick, acting like I’m meeting someone, or the place is on fire, one of the two. “I better go.”

“Okay, then. Well, please call me, would you? I feel like I don’t know you anymore.” She forces a hug, and I muse to myself as I leave the bar: she doesn’t know me anymore, and that’s fine with me.

I didn’t call her, but she sure called me. Three times in three weeks. I had to start screening calls again. I hate screening.

So I started small. My first move was a dirty answering machine message on her phone, in which I tried to use every filthy word I knew she hated. Even the c-word that’s used by mobsters in movies to describe a woman’s reproductive organ. That earned me an angry message right back, so I pressed my advantage and tried another dirty message. She showed up at the house, so I graduated to letters. Long, spite-drenched missives that weren’t really offenisve, just tried to hurt her in every imaginable way. After a year of dating, I had plenty of ammunition.

It was after one of those letters that she first started using Susan as an emissary. Susan asked me to stop, for her sake, for Danielle’s sake, and I outlined my terms: I don’t ever want to speak to Danielle again. But it’s like Susan didn’t hear me, because they both kept pressing the issue. After seven messages and five letters, I went for the bag of shit, the one that made me hesitate. But hell, even that didn’t work.

“It’s like I can’t win,” I tell Mike the weekend after the shit incident. We’re on the roof again, vandalizing the sidewalk below with our empty bottles. “If I keep harassing her, she keeps pleading for me to stop and become someone I’m not anymore. If I stop, she assumes I’ve gone back to ‘normal’ and continues her onslaught of phone calls and visits. There’s no way to make it work.”

“I’ve said it already, and I must say it again,” Mike says, again. “That bag of shit thing was fucked up. Totally. Beyond reason. I can’t believe you did that.”

“What, did I go too far?”

“Too far?! Steve, you drew a line in the sand that said ‘Too Far’ and then you hopped in a Mac truck and drove two thousand miles over that line. This is some serious shit. It’s illegal. And for what?!”

“I just want her to stop calling.”

“I think that’s bullshit.” Mike throws an empty plastic vodka jug over the edge; it bounces ten seconds later as it hits the pavement. “I think that deep down you really want to be with her again. You can’t stand the thought of losing her, and you definitely can’t stand the thought of keeping her around while that pansy Randy’s her new man. So you harass her. Pull her hair. It’s like you’re eight years old.”

“I don’t think eight-year-olds would be so into dog shit,” I deadpan, and Mike laughs hard. “And besides, it was your idea.”

“I told you to treat her like shit, not to THROW SHIT AT HER. You took me far too seriously. Hell, you’ve taken everything far too seriously lately. You’re all worked up into a lather. You really need to relax. So she keeps calling. Big deal. Ignore her.”

“I tried that…”

“Try it again.” Mike seems a bit pissed, which startles me. “This whole scene is too messed up right now. Just back off.”

I’m not usually good at taking advice, but for some reason Mike’s words sink in. I probe my insides, and sure enough, I find a glowing ember of something I used to feel for Danielle. Could this ember be responsible for reattaching me to her in this twisted new relationship?

As if on cue, the phone rings. I answer it for a change.

“Goddamnit, Steve.” It’s Danielle. I guess we’re past the pleasantries stage. “What the fuck is your problem? Randy says that if you try anything like that again, he’ll kick your ass.”

At first, I stifle my laughter. He couldn’t kick my sock’s ass. Yet I’m surprised that as I listen to her tirade, my face is blushing, definitely not the behavior of a man who’s proud of what he’s done.

“Danielle, listen…” I can’t believe I’m actually trying to engage her in conversation, but there I am, trying to engage her in conversation. I even feel an apology coming on. “I was wrong. I made a mistake. Many of them in a row, in fact.”

“Yeah, you sure did.” She’s softening a bit, but she’s still mad. “You’re a child. A big child with pubic hair and no balls.”

Now I’m really laughing.

“Danielle, I think I regret what I did. I just wish you’d consider my emotional position on this, and what could have made me act that way, when you’re screaming at me…”

“You THINK you regret? You were wrong, Steve! What you did was flat-out wrong. And yet I’m supposed to consider YOUR feelings. You’re so goddamn selfish. Did you ever think about how breaking up with you made me feel?”

A surge of self-righteous anger swells inside me. I try to push it down, but I can’t. It’s too raw.

“Right. You’re the martyr here. Sacrificing our relationship for my own good, then running off and hooking up with Slim Pickens. Thanks a lot, Danielle. You’re the hero.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she screams. “You’re so fucking hopeless.” She’s flipping out. I recognize the tone in her voice all too well. There’s a lot I suddenly want to say, but when I open my mouth to speak, nothing comes out. I could never put all the words together. I’m emotionally deflating, falling apart into tiny pieces as she screams at me, and I’m powerless to stop it.

“Fine. You want silence? You got it. It’s over. I never want to speak to you again.” She said it–the words I’ve wanted to hear since I started this stupid game. So then, where’s the elation, the relief? It’s not there. Instead, I’m just grey with loss.

“Well, you’ve won. The bridge is burned. So have a good life. And learn how to let things go. You’ll be much happier.”

SLAM. Danielle’s phone hits her reciever. She’s gone, and so am I.