Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me Part 9

There wasn't much detail in the story accompanying the photo other than she was sixteen, a year younger than me. A month later she was featured on the front page of Sports Ill.u.s.trated Sports Ill.u.s.trated as the most promising U.S. female skater. Inside I learned that her older sister and both her parents were skaters and that her father had died when she was seven. I learned she was planning on attending college in the fall. Later, I learned-as I prepared to write about this lost love-that she and her mother had purchased several copies of as the most promising U.S. female skater. Inside I learned that her older sister and both her parents were skaters and that her father had died when she was seven. I learned she was planning on attending college in the fall. Later, I learned-as I prepared to write about this lost love-that she and her mother had purchased several copies of Sports Ill.u.s.trated Sports Ill.u.s.trated right before boarding a plane bound for Brussels where she was to compete in the World Champions.h.i.+ps. right before boarding a plane bound for Brussels where she was to compete in the World Champions.h.i.+ps.

As it turns out, a wallet is the least least safe place to put valuables. I didn't hold on to the photograph long. That summer my wallet fell into the warm water of a sandpit lake along the Platte River. The physical image was gone but the memory of her face has stayed with me to this day. safe place to put valuables. I didn't hold on to the photograph long. That summer my wallet fell into the warm water of a sandpit lake along the Platte River. The physical image was gone but the memory of her face has stayed with me to this day.

I thought of her when Darrel, one of my best friends, recently called to tell me about finding his lost love. Impressive, since Darrel is eighty-seven years old. His first wife died shortly after they celebrated their fifty-fifth wedding anniversary. His second divorced him after three years because he didn't act his age; he likes to swim in Puget Sound with the otters early every morning. (What is the proper age for early-morning swims with otters anway?) The divorce depressed him and he began seeing a shrink "for the second time," he told me. Before long he was feeling better except that he was dating women who were in their thirties. I should say "because" he was dating women in their thirties. The shrink asked him about his past love life and Darrel told him about falling in love with his nurse when he was in the hospital for gallbladder surgery during the summer of 1963.

"That was when I went to a shrink for the first time. I asked him how much it would cost to talk me out of this [affair]. I did not want to destroy my family. I never saw her again."

For a man in love there are no more terrible words than those. I've uttered them too. In 1963 I called my girlfriend at the beginning of my third year in college. Her mother answered the phone and told me Sherry would not be coming back to school. "She's not Sherry Morse any longer; she's Sherry Poole. She got married this summer." I never saw her again. I would hope, if that were to happen now, I would at least get an e-mail.

Darrel's luck was better than mine, however. His second shrink suggested he try to get in touch with his long-lost nurse. He tracked down her address from a friend. She didn't answer him right away. Months later she told him her story. She had gone to college and had become president of a nursing college. She had been married but her husband had recently died. Their correspondence led to a meeting. Their meeting led to a decision to marry. (Have I mentioned Darrel was luckier than me?) He was calling to tell me the good news. When I told him I had gone online to purchase a doc.u.ment certifying that I was a reverend so I could officiate the wedding of another friend, he asked if I would officiate his. So, this fall I will preside over the vows of the man who has, in turn, married me twice and baptized all three of my children. Technically, I still owe him a few.

Darrel and I became friends in 1973. The year we met was the year I started in business. It was the year I got engaged. It was the year a peace agreement was reached in Paris that allowed our prisoners of war to return home from Vietnam. We had a lot to talk about. We talked about the war and the poets who knew it best. I remember sharing c.u.mmings' poem about "Olaf," a conscientious objector who while being destroyed kept repeating this perfection: "There is some s.h.i.+t I will not eat." It is a declaratory phrase I regret I learned too late.

We talked about love but did not trust ourselves to talk about our losses. These were too entwined with the dark and lonely places we shared with no one. Even the girl whose picture I removed from the newspaper remained a secret. My lost love and I never corresponded. We never met. The plane that took off from New York never landed in Brussels. It crashed killing all on board including my love, Laurence Owen, and the entire U.S. female skating team. I can still see her smiling face, sharp eyes, arched back, and confident spirit moving across the ice.

Lesson#43

Don't Enter a Karaoke Contest Near Smith College; You Will Lose to Lesbians by Jason Nash

When a man starts getting fine p.u.s.s.y, there's a boost to his ego unrivaled by anything else in life. Unlike getting a good job-which, when all is said and done, is still work-dating someone hot makes you feel intoxicated. Blessed. Like winning the lottery or even better, finding a ma.s.sive discrepancy in your checking account. You don't know why you're getting all that money, but you keep your mouth shut and hope no one notices.

Karyn was the kind of beautiful I wasn't used to. Sort of alien looking, like a girl you'd see in a Prada ad, affecting a vacant stare while standing between two Wiemaraners. I always dreamed of dating a hot girl, but when I did, she didn't look anything like Karyn. Thanks to my mom's work in the cosmetics industry in the 1980s, my ideal woman has always been Samantha Fox, circa "Naughty Girls (Need Love Too)."

And Karyn was more than just unique looking. She was smart and said so very little, that when she did speak you would hang on her every word. She was impenetrable to trends, put absolutely no thought into her wardrobe, and was the first person I knew who admitted having horrible taste in music.

I saw her at the student union and I remember thinking, could I get this girl? Me? The guy who was a fat f.u.c.k in high school? The guy who was tormented for being the only Jewish kid and had the nickname "Wej"? (That's "Jew" spelled backwards.) The guy who ruined Thanksgiving dinner once when he put too much toilet paper in the bowl, leaving his aunt and uncle's shoes surfacing in an inch of s.h.i.+t water while they ate? That guy?

But things were going well for me in college. I had lost weight, had great friends, and scored an interns.h.i.+p at Sat.u.r.day Night Live Sat.u.r.day Night Live. Most of all, I finally found my ident.i.ty: the funny guy. The life of the party. And I loved it.

I approached Karyn at a bar. She was into me immediately, probably because I came highly recommended from a friend. I drove her home and we made out. It was G.o.dd.a.m.n heaven.

The final piece to my perfect college existence was there. A hot girlfriend. The only problem was, and I didn't realize it until years later, Karyn thought I was a f.u.c.king douche bag.

In fact, she may have only only dated me because everybody else thought I was cool. To her I was a Britney Spears record, something of appeal but little substance that you look down at in line and go, "Why am I buying this?" dated me because everybody else thought I was cool. To her I was a Britney Spears record, something of appeal but little substance that you look down at in line and go, "Why am I buying this?"

And the worst part was, I was a douche bag. I thought I was so cool back then. My jokes were terrible. I'd put a cigarette in my belly b.u.t.ton and draw eyes and nose on my chest as a gag. Was I in f.u.c.king Mumenshantz? I tried so hard to get into the coolest bars on campus. I even dropped names about famous people I had met at SNL SNL. Who could blame her for hating me?

That's not to say I didn't try to make her like me-even love me. Early on in our relations.h.i.+p I had an important realization: "Oh right, she hasn't seen me dance yet! Once Karyn sees what a good dancer I am, she'll give herself over to me completely."

I hatched a plan. I'd throw a party at my house, fully believing that once she saw my dancing ability things would turn around. Now, a word about my dancing. It is what I call "mock good." In that, no, it's not good, but I'm so serious about it I've convinced myself that it is good, and others seem to be charmed by that.

When the music came on I started moving and everyone began laughing and having fun. Everyone but Karyn, who just stood there, like a bored, unimpressed ice sculpture.

"Wait, no, you're not getting it," I wanted to say. "See, I'm being ironic. Notice me and appreciate the spectacle I'm making!"

I ran to her, trying to make it better but only doing more damage.

This, of course, is the curse of the insecure male. It's not our gla.s.ses or balding head. It's the fact that when the hot girl gets in our proximity, we simply can't just be. Our methods of survival are the very things that will drive her away.

It's like when you're at a fancy hotel pool and a bunch of girls take their tops off and it's no big deal. Well, I'm always the guy running to everyone else, pointing and yelling, "Did you see the topless girls? There are topless girls by the pool!" That's not what a guy with a hot girlfriend does.

The end came when I asked Karyn to come cheer me and a friend on in the finals of a regional karaoke contest. I would be singing "Say, Say, Say" and doing my best Michael Jackson impersonation.

"I don't think so," she sad. "That's your thing."

What the f.u.c.k did that mean? "That's your thing."

Karyn had this way of answering questions that would leave me unsure how she felt. "That's your thing." Like you're above my stupid college bar compet.i.tion? Or like, you're jealous of my time in the spotlight? I mean, s.h.i.+t, girl, I wear a f.u.c.king sparkly glove during the song! Isn't that something you'd want to see?

Karyn never showed and we ended up loosing to two lesbians who sang "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." The stage slid out underneath me during the best part of the song: where I come in with a lift of the leg and shake of the s.h.i.+n singing, "All alone I sit home by the phone! Waiting for you, baby!" It didn't matter really. The contest was a mile from Smith College. We never had a chance against those lesbians.

As we rode to the movies the next day, I was furious. I took a deep breath and finally said it.

"I don't get it. You don't think I'm funny. I mean, everyone thinks I'm funny but you."

"I know," she said, with no emotion in her voice.

We lasted a few months after that, mostly because I was living in New York. I drove back to college to see her, hoping she would be impressed by the fact that I had moved to the city. She wasn't.

Our s.e.x started to go downhill, as she began not moving during the act. This made me unable to get hard, and then she blamed me for my lack of prowess. I was too much of a novice to tell her that half of this was her fault. I apologized repeatedly and convinced myself she had to have been molested at some point. Have I mentioned I was douche bag?

A few weeks later she dumped me. It annihilated me. I couldn't understand why she didn't like me. I had things going on. I mean, I cleaned David Spade's apartment! I thought about her every day for almost two years, and prayed she'd return. She did an amazing job of giving me nothing, never calling back and just letting me die, slow, cold, and painfully.

When I started writing this piece, I hired a private investigator in hopes of getting back in touch with her.

"Gonna be tough," said Detective Dave. "Single women in their late twenties, very transient group. Nothing holding them down."

I'm not chasing Sasquatch, a.s.shole. Just put her name or social security number or something into the computer and tell me where she is. Three weeks later, Dave sent me an e-mail with a subject heading, "Well, We Did It!"

Dear Jason, Dear Jason, I made contact today with Karyn Gadd! I made contact today with Karyn Gadd! She called me to ask what this was about and I told her you wanted to talk to her for a short story. I told her that you had no ill feelings about the breakup and that you did not want to hurt her in anyway. She called me to ask what this was about and I told her you wanted to talk to her for a short story. I told her that you had no ill feelings about the breakup and that you did not want to hurt her in anyway. I DID give her your phone number, so CASE CLOSED. I DID give her your phone number, so CASE CLOSED. Sincerely, Sincerely, Dave Dineen, PI Hey, Dave, maybe she would call me back if he didn't open with, "Hey, this guy's not going to rape and murder you, so why don't you give him a jangle."

And that was it. I was out $250 and she never called. Perfect really. The girl who never gave me anything, doesn't give it to me one final time. But what did I hope to hear? That I was obnoxious? That I was cheesy? That she started dating me because she thought I was cool, but quickly learned I wasn't?

Karyn made me realize my greatest fear: that someone would see through my tricks. My own personal David Copperfield bulls.h.i.+t I've honed to make other people think I'm special. And that's what she did, stripped me of anything valuable I had to offer.

More than her beauty, the thing I wanted most from Karyn was her calmness. Her ability to sit still, stare, and feel numb. I married someone equally as neurotic as I am and I love her and we make a very entertaining couple, but there is chaos everywhere we go. I slay dragons every day, or more to the point, I run from them, but I keep moving. Waiting, hoping one day I can rest and breathe easy. My wife is like Karyn in some ways. Smart, pretty, a tough audience. She hates when I need to be the center of attention. The difference is, I don't listen to her. I walk around every day positive I'm a good dancer.

Lesson#44

Get Dumped Before It Matters by David Rees

Unlike most of the "winners" in this book, I've never been dumped.

Let that sink in for a moment: never been dumped. A perfect record. What's that thing in baseball, where batters are graded on some sort of numerical scale? Like, "Joe Smith is batting .300; he's. .h.i.tting one out of every .300 b.a.l.l.s." Well, when it comes to not being dumped, I'm batting 1,000.00. One thousand percent perfect. One thousand percent never-have-I-been-dumped.

You ask: "How did you get those awesome stats?" And, "Are your relations.h.i.+ps available on baseball cards, so that I might learn from them?" And, "If so, what does the bubblegum taste like?"

The answers are, respectively, "Read on"; "Yes, from ToppsAdult"; and "Monogamy."

Although I am proud of my remarkable statistic, there's something you should know about it. Let's turn it over like a nursing sow and take note: How many relations.h.i.+ps suckle at its teats? One and . . . two. Ah! You see, I'm not such an intimidating bada.s.s, I've only had two relations.h.i.+ps: A girlfriend in high school and a wife, presently.

My high school girlfriend never dumped me. Or, whenever she did, I made sure to resuscitate our relations.h.i.+p and counterdump her down the line-effectively canceling out her dumps, which is how I maintained my perfect figure. (Like how -3 plus -3 winds up equaling +16, remember?) That is to say, our relations.h.i.+p ended without the definitive, full-glottal stop of an asymmetrical dump. It was more like the slow, years-long decay of a mighty oak tree, where every few months a woodsman staggers by and makes out with the oak tree when he's tipsy, even though the better angels of his nature say, "Why complicate things in the forest, tipsy woodsman? Didn't you promise to stay away from that ol' oak tree?" And then the whole affair is immortalized in a mournful Appalachian fiddle tune.

Still . . . when all is said and done, I closed out my first "at bat" without getting dumped.

As for my second relations.h.i.+p, the one with my wife, things are starting to sound less like a mournful Appalachian fiddle tune and more like a Keith Moon drum solo being swallowed by a Cannibal Corpse song. Yes, sadly, my wife probably WILL dump me-and dump me hard, with extreme prejudice, like how Russell Crowe expresses his feelings in hotel lobbies.

The rub is, when you're a professional, grown-up man with a wedding band, a Roth IRA, and a funny feeling about that mole on your back; when you see all teenagers as irascible enemies of the state; when you start enjoying toast-when you get to that mature, married stage, it's not called "getting dumped." It's called "getting f.u.c.king divorced." And unlike getting dumped, getting f.u.c.king divorced ain't free. There's a whole legal element involved. Namely, you pay a lawyer to notarize your life as "Failure, Pending Lottery Win." He stamps your soul with his embossing machine so you can carry within you a legally binding bruise, for all time, to your grave, you colossal loser. Also, your tax return gets more complicated.

In short, divorce is an expensive, life-shattering, and inconvenient way to learn elementary lessons about life and love.

Lessons like these:

1. The fact that you mope around your "home office," sighing and scratching the five o'clock shadow spilling down your neck, while you "work on your screenplay in your mind," wearing sweatpants on a Wednesday afternoon, does not mean you are a tortured creative genius. It means you are a LOSER. If you're old enough to drive, you may no longer wear pants with drawstrings-even if they are your "dressy sweatpants." Look respectable for your woman, even while she's at work. It will comfort her to know you are wearing a belt. And by the way, if it's before noon, it's not called a "five o'clock shadow"-it's called a "shave, you loser." 2. The fact that you used to bake bread back in college, and now refuse to do so, even when your wife asks sweetly, longingly, does not mean you are a post-hippie citizen trying to carve out new paradigms of consumption in a post-9/11 world. It means you're lazy. Your depression has somehow turbo-charged your entropy. Congratulations! You are now the exact opposite of a Hadron Super Collider. If you don't act soon, and show some initiative in the kitchen, your molecules actually will leech out of your toes and stain your socks. Then you'll have to spend money on socks! Instead, bake a loaf of bread for your wife. In fact, shoot the moon and bake her a G.o.dd.a.m.n cake. She works much, much harder than you. 2. The fact that you used to bake bread back in college, and now refuse to do so, even when your wife asks sweetly, longingly, does not mean you are a post-hippie citizen trying to carve out new paradigms of consumption in a post-9/11 world. It means you're lazy. Your depression has somehow turbo-charged your entropy. Congratulations! You are now the exact opposite of a Hadron Super Collider. If you don't act soon, and show some initiative in the kitchen, your molecules actually will leech out of your toes and stain your socks. Then you'll have to spend money on socks! Instead, bake a loaf of bread for your wife. In fact, shoot the moon and bake her a G.o.dd.a.m.n cake. She works much, much harder than you. 3. The fact that you spent approximately 40 hours last year watching 3. The fact that you spent approximately 40 hours last year watching G.o.dd.a.m.n-can-you-believe-I-actually-did-this Miami Ink G.o.dd.a.m.n-can-you-believe-I-actually-did-this Miami Ink does not mean you revel in the twenty-first-century agora as one node of the postmodern mult.i.tude. It means you have lost your mind and secretly want to die stupid. And alone. Turn off your television, unplug it from the wall, bury it under fifty pounds of sand in another country, and spend your evenings memorizing seventeenth-century love poetry for your wife. Think about it-which will be more comforting in your twilight years: the collected verse of John Donne (WHICH YOU HAVE TOTALLY MEMORIZED) or vague memories of a bunch of tattoo-people talking about their feelings on TV? does not mean you revel in the twenty-first-century agora as one node of the postmodern mult.i.tude. It means you have lost your mind and secretly want to die stupid. And alone. Turn off your television, unplug it from the wall, bury it under fifty pounds of sand in another country, and spend your evenings memorizing seventeenth-century love poetry for your wife. Think about it-which will be more comforting in your twilight years: the collected verse of John Donne (WHICH YOU HAVE TOTALLY MEMORIZED) or vague memories of a bunch of tattoo-people talking about their feelings on TV?

Now that I appreciate the stakes, and understand how my shortcomings have flourished in the confines of my most important relations.h.i.+p, I have come to loathe my special statistic. I would happily trade my perfect dating record-that satiny, unblemished, unbedumpled sheet-for a mangy, flea-bitten patchwork quilt of "lessons learned," st.i.tched together by women who dumped me.

I should have learned not to wear sweatpants from Siobhan, the vapid fas.h.i.+onista I should have met, and dated, and been dumped by, right out of college. Siobhan would have taken one look at my "awesome" collection of "exercise trousers" and had them secretly rendered to a base in Uzbekistan, where they would have been boiled alive. (My "special scarf" would have been water-boarded.) Then, when I met my wife for an anniversary c.o.c.ktail I would have represented in a sleek pair of tailored slacks, not in paint-splattered Russell Athletics with the drawstrings hanging out over my crotch.

And Stars.h.i.+ne, the free-spirited vegetarian carpenter I should have b.u.mped into and dated in 1999 (and been spectacularly dumped by on the eve of the new millennium because of the Zodiac!), should have sat me down and reminded me that baking bread connects me to all humanity. For I am MAN, provider. Why deny this wretched world my gifts? If Stars.h.i.+ne had done her job, my wife would be enjoying fresh-baked focaccia as I write this. Not frozen bagels made by robots.

Then, of course, there's Krystyn. Long-lost Krystyn. Lovely Krystyn. Sure, she had the world's worst name, and I sometimes called her "Kyrstyn" by mistake. (How we would have laughed about that!) But I still would have wept when she dumped me for watching too much television. I would still be haunted by her final words: "You watch too much television. I'm marrying Jaysyn, my X-treme athlete frynd. Because you watch too much television." I think that would have registered.

Alas, I have learned none of these things. Because none of those women existed.

You know those dummies with the black and yellow pie charts on their foreheads who are always smas.h.i.+ng into winds.h.i.+elds in slow motion? And in the slowed-down instant before impact, you can almost hear them say, in their mannequin drones, "Oh, I get it-I should have worn my seat belt?" I'm one of them, learning all these important lessons too late, in the melancholy split second before my head smashes through my marriage's winds.h.i.+eld and bloodies any hope I had of eternal bliss.

I blame all the women who never dumped me.

Lesson#45

It Wasn't Me, It Was Her by Rick Marin

I got in touch with my college girlfriend recently when her husband left her for the daughter of a famous TV mogul. We exchanged e-pleasantries. Then she asked how come in my memoir, Cad: Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor Cad: Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor, I didn't mention that she dumped me. Okay, Julia (as I called her in the book), I'll bite. I e-mailed back, "I thought I dumped you." Her response came fast and furious: "Say you're joking or I'll lose what little faith in men I have left."

My fingers froze on the keys. I thought we were engaging in a few gentle jabs to the ribs, but she was serious. The woman was clearly in a vulnerable place, man-wise. A TV star in her own right in Canada, where we both grew up, she had now been reduced to tabloid fodder. I needed to be giving, sensitive, understanding . . . Unfortunately, I possess none of these qualities. But I can be quite condescending.

"Well, if it was important for you to think that," I wrote, and changed the subject. Still, she'd planted the seed of doubt. Could my first love possibly have dumped me me? For two decades, I'd firmly believed otherwise. You might even say I cherished the belief. Now I needed proof-a forensic a.n.a.lysis of the death of the relations.h.i.+p. Fingerprints, DNA, sungla.s.ses like David Caruso's on CSI: Miami CSI: Miami. So I snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and went out to the garage to dig out a musty shoe box of Canadian-stamped letters with 1980s postmarks. Then I went into the musty shoe box of my mind (isn't that a Barbra Streisand song?) and dug out some memories of those years when I met the girl who almost became the first ex-Mrs. Marin.

It was my second year, Julia's first, at McGill University in Montreal. She had a wild mane of hair that a pretentious Art History 101 student (like me, then) might call "pre-Raphaelite." Her angular jaw-line was on a perfect parallel with her cheekbones. She had quick, appraising eyes and a slightly gummy smile with tiny perfect teeth. Big-boned, but toned, she was still coming into her looks and by no means thought of herself as the mediagenic beauty she would later become.

We met at a meet-and-greet in the quad of our dorm, Douglas Hall. I wasted no time in chatting up both her and and her roommate. Julia would later profess amazement that this "short guy"-five feet nine, for the record-could be so c.o.c.ky. Like most men, I went for the easier mark-the roommate. She was a blond innocent hot enough to have been wooed by Pierre Trudeau and chaste enough to have rebuffed his advances. I didn't get much further than Canada's playboy prime minister, but while I was trying, Julia and I became friends. her roommate. Julia would later profess amazement that this "short guy"-five feet nine, for the record-could be so c.o.c.ky. Like most men, I went for the easier mark-the roommate. She was a blond innocent hot enough to have been wooed by Pierre Trudeau and chaste enough to have rebuffed his advances. I didn't get much further than Canada's playboy prime minister, but while I was trying, Julia and I became friends.

I was on the c.o.c.ky side then, and she was the first woman I liked because she made fun of me. Her sense of humor was goofy and soph.o.m.oric, like a guy's. She impersonated minor Canadian celebrities. (Her Brian Linehan rivaled Martin Short's on SCTV SCTV.) She told Newfie jokes-our equivalent of Polish humor, directed at the good people of Newfoundland. ("How do you kill a Newfie while he's drinking? Slam the toilet seat on his head.") She called people "d.i.n.ks" and "f.a.ggots"-both as insults and terms of endearment. Her idea of an F-word was "Fuzz!" Out of context, none of this sounds sidesplittingly hilarious, but she was very good company.

"You're good for me because I waste all my time entertaining you (something I enjoy very much)," she wrote in one of the letters I dug out of the garage.

At the Douglas Hall Christmas party, we both got very drunk. "Julia's blotto!" the resident Newfie announced. Blotto enough to convert our friends.h.i.+p into the official beginning of a three-year relations.h.i.+p. I lost a friend doing it-she was seeing a Tennessee preppy at the time. But he had to go. This was my first true love.

Dating during our second semester was single-bedded bliss, though I could have done without staring at her Police poster every night. She had a thing for Sting, who according to imdb.com is a full six feet tall.

That summer, she went back to Toronto-our hometown. I went to Oxford, the one in England, to immerse myself in pints of liquid Eng. lit. We wrote impa.s.sioned letters. Well, hers were impa.s.sioned. Mine were filled with disquisitions on the difference between an "Oxonian" and an "Oxonion." Or so she complains in her letters. I'm sure she was right. I never gave her the mushy romantic stuff she asked for. In letters or in person.

That fall, we shacked up off campus. Oh, the anxiety of those first parental visits when they'd find out we had only-gasp!-one bedroom. We played house in an apartment on Summerhill Avenue, dress-rehearsing for marriage. The cutesy nicknames: "Munchkin," "Rice," and, inexplicably, "Tapir." The scavenger hunt of love notes left around the apartment: "Happy October the 2nd!"-signed with her last name crossed out and mine written in. And, "I love you very much even though you're a f.a.ggot sometimes (and I mean a big one)." Another nickname she had for me was "The Minuteman." Hey, I was nineteen! There was chemistry. Sometimes too much.

Our test tube of premature domestication had a tendency to explode. Not just yelling or throwing capons at each other. Actual physical tussles. We were pretty evenly matched, but I could usually take her. Sucking wind, I'd just manage to pin her to the futon like a wrestler, demanding she "give." If we were lucky, the deathmatch would take a s.e.xy turn. This was, after all, the decade of Fatal Attraction Fatal Attraction. Julia wasn't a bunny-boiler, but she could be a ball-buster. Which was how she was typecast during her college acting career. First, as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest The Importance of Being Earnest, then Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

She got deeper into acting. I got deeper into gunning for a 4.0. The only note I have in my shoe box that's from me to her says, "I've gone to the library, but I'll be back around 11 p.m." What does the "but" mean? Like eleven o'clock was knocking off early early? In the s.p.a.ce of two semesters, I'd gone from a DJ/alcohol-poisoning guy to-as she put it-"developing quite a reputation as a poindexter."

Things started to turn dark. Her notes to me degenerated from "I gotta admit I like living with ya, so always love me, eh?" to "I don't know what's happening to us."

This was after a month.

Another sign of her mounting dissatisfaction was the affair she started having with the gay guy upstairs. Not in the Biblical sense, I'm fairly certain. But I'd come home and find the two of them watching The Wizard of Oz The Wizard of Oz, with him prancing around in a pair of her red pumps. This turned out to be another dress rehearsal. Years later, Julia got famous in Canada as host of a cooking show built around her making fun of a short (nowhere near five feet nine) gay sidekick.

I remember how mad she was that I only went one night of the twelve-night run of Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf. "Term papers" was my excuse. The real reason, I suspect, was I didn't need to sit in the audience when we were living our own George-and-Martha drama every night at home. She was asking more than I could deliver, so I retreated into my books like Albee's toxic marrieds into their booze and bitterness. And, like them, we stayed together anyway.

I graduated. She had a year to go. Five hours I'd drive to visit her from Toronto to Montreal through blinding snow in an ailing Chevette. We'd fight all weekend. It ended, symbolically at least, when I threw up in her best friend's hat. I should mention that I was wasted. And it wasn't a very nice hat. There was no definitive breakup, but the visits stopped. And we were suddenly affectionate in a way unique to that relations.h.i.+p limbo between dating and hating.

"Rickles, I have no one to hug and talk to," she wrote me. "Plus I can't have tantrums because no one notices."

A year after it was over, I tried to get back in there. She rebuffed me. My inability to "open up" was cited. I cursed myself for not being more giving, sensitive, understanding during all those years with her. I consoled myself by hugging tight the belief that I had dumped her.

When I heard her marriage had broken up, I told myself the reason I wanted to reconnect was to offer support. The truth of what I wanted to offer was more like gloating. I never met the now ex-husband but I'd always felt a vague antipathy. When they first started dating, she asked if they could stay at my apartment in New York while I was out of town. I said no. I didn't want my first love and some bouncer-actor-hyphenate soiling my sheets. I might have cast some aspersions on the guy, perhaps invoked the word "freeloader."