Yours, Mine, and Ours

Relationships are wonderful things. Romantic,… exhilarating,… fun. All the things that Hollywood and Cosmo said it would be. It’s the break-up that sucks. I’ve never met anyone who has said,” you know, the relationship was OK, but the break-up? Now THAT was a good time.” We hate breaking-up so much that we will stay in relationships that are no longer satisfying just to avoid the ending. Break-ups require a lot of diplomacy. Who gets the friends,… who gets to hang out at which bars,… and the mandatory returning of the other person’s possessions/stuff. Yeah, the little things that have slowly started to creep into our homes;…the CDs,…the DVDs,…the random tee-shirt, that now have to be found and returned with as much dignity as one can muster. What once seemed like a sign of commitment quickly becomes a symbolic “albatross” of resentment, guilt and simmering urges for retribution!! What “might have been” swiftly evolves into “don’t let the door hit ya on the way out”!

One of the worst side effects of having a pile of someone else’s stuff is that it keeps the door open for “rebound” communication. It’s usually the jilted lover that feels an urgent need to return such important things like socks, magazines, frisbees and five dollar sun-glasses. Deep down we know that our exes don’t want this stuff. However, that doesn’t keep us from trying though, does it? It gives us a reason to call and secretly hope that hearing our voice will be enough to send them running back to our arms with renewed romantic intentions. How many times have we had to convince a friend not to call their ex at two A.M. just because a pair of socks and a magazine where still at the house?

The only exception to the rule of returned goods is men’s sweatshirts. A guy who erroneously leaves behind a sweatshirt might as well consider it gone. I’m not sure what it is about men’s sweatshirts but they beat anything found in the women’s department. They are just the right size; slightly too big but not so much that it becomes annoying. Men’s sweatshirts always seem to have the perfect amount of cologne on them. When a girl is in the first amazing weeks of a new relationship nothing, besides actually having her beau beside her, is as wonderful as the smell of his cologne when he not around. Nope, there is nothing that is going to get a girl to relinquish a nice hoodie after she has worn it. It’s actually ;in the dating rulebook I believe; we get custody fair and square.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have held on to things that should have gone straight to the recycle bin in the hope that my ex would try to contact me. My most recent foray into what basically boils down to kidnapping has to do with the Bartender. Yup, this guy, AGAIN. When we were dating he had brought his golf clubs over and parked them on my porch. I’m not exactly sure why they came to my house in the first place. I generally avoid turning my living room into a Par 3 for losers! I imagine it had something to do with his not owning a car. After he disappeared without a trace I looked at those golf clubs like they were the Holy Grail. People just don’t walk away from an expensive set of clubs. He just “had to” resurface to claim them at some point. He would have to contact me and then, THEN, I would get my answers as to why he bolted without as much as a goodbye text.

Instead of calling him, I waited patiently. Or one could say I stewed in a malevolent manner worthy of people who take great pleasure in killing baby seals. And I waited … and waited … and waited. He didn’t come forward to collect his dubious belongings, but his friends came forward with things. Lots of things that I really didn’t need or want to hear. The biggest blow to the gut was when I was told that he had been sleeping with different people the entire time we were together. Not just one person mind you, but “many”,…”several”,….”beau coup”! . He was having so much sex I’m amazed he even had time to get to work. Oh that’s right … he was having sex right in the bar that he worked at. Well, at least it was convenient if not somewhat disconcerting to think about what was growing on the bar surface.

After I was duly informed of this insensitive betrayal, I went from longing to livid to lethal. I no longer hoped that he would come crawling back to claim his silly golf clubs and my heart. The only place I wanted to see this jackass was in front of my car so I could harpoon him with my front bumper. Now, what I should have done after finding out about Houdini and his harem of women was to throw those clubs on Craigslist and reside for a weekend at a day spa with the proceeds. I also could have created a fabulous new age sculpture and presented it to the Bartender on his lawn. Believe me, these thoughts crossed my mind like chickens absconding for the other side of the road, along with various other vengeful scenarios. In the end I put the useless clubs on the back porch. Out of sight and out of mind. I may not be in the running for woman of the year, but I am sure as hell a much better person than this guy. Doing something malicious would have only brought me down to his level (as gratifying as that might have been). In fact, I think you need a passport to travel so far down, and mine is expired.

It seems that the minute we stop longing for something or someone, then they show up. This proved true with the Bartender. I had already exiled his belongings to the back of the porch that I seldom if ever use. I was doing my best to move on from such a shitty, callow relationship, and seeing his stuff everyday wasn’t going to help me. Then he texted. One of his friends was in town and they were going golfing. The Bartender wanted to come and pick up his clubs. As it turned out, karma was on my side for once. I was out of town and obviously unavailable to unlock my porch. Jeez, that really sucks, huh? I had no intention of keeping his things permanently. As a matter of fact, there is no one on the planet who wants his stuff out of my house more than me. However, the fact that he wasn’t able to hit the links with his bromantic partner brought me no sorrow. Like I said, I wouldn’t do anything to harm the belongings he left behind, but I am not going to go out of my way to help him reclaim them either. What do I look like? A hat check girl at the Ritz?? As of this moment, that was the Bartender’s only attempt at picking up his stuff. As summer bleeds into fall, I wonder if he will ever attempt to reacquire his crap. I’ll be sure to keep everyone posted.

As irritating as it is to deal with a few random things left behind, it is a mere “bump in the road” compared to the upheaval that ensues when you break up with the person you are actually living with. I have only lived with one boyfriend:…The Lump. You will get to know this one better in future columns, but for now, I’ll give you the basic highlights. We met through mutual friends, started dating, and moved in together WAYYYYYY too soon. I know, I know … It was a terrible, misguided decision. Believe me, I learned my lesson. Things were going great, or at least I thought so. Three days after booking a very expensive and rather lengthy vacation to California, the Lump walked out of my life. Yes, you heard that right, three *&%$#ing days. Some people really don’t deserve to be allowed to walk among the rest of us normal people. Isn’t there an island for people like that? Can’t we create one?

The Lump broke up with me after I came home from work. It took him all of ten minutes. Folks, that’s all of 600 seconds! He offered no concrete reasons and no sincere apologies. He did, however, leave me behind in a house filled with his stuff. Stuff that I would have to pack up myself. Thanks buddy. Hey, if I want to riff on “stuff” I’ll listen to the late, great George Carlin’s famous take on the issue! …At least that was funny. As he lumbered out the door like a greasy capon, he muttered something about coming back at a later date to collect his things. As painful as I knew it would be to have to put all of his things in boxes, there was absolutely no way that the Lump was going to come back into my home (among other things, he couldn’t grasp the concept of wiping his feet off first).

That night I threw what was obviously “his” on the porch. Clothing,…shoes, …books (mostly comics at that); anything that caught my eye. By the way, I didn’t bother with the formality of boxes either. He was only getting what he brought in. I left it up to the Lump to figure out how he was going to transport it. After I had scoured my apartment of all apparent signs that he had once resided there, I collapsed on my couch and cried like a teenage girl watching the movie “The Notebook” for the first time. I continued to cry like that for weeks.

Once I started my emotional comeback to the land of the living, I was startled by one glaring fact. His shit was everywhere! It was like those mucous trails that snails leave behind. Was this stuff multiplying while I was at work or what? I swear I didn’t see him move this much stuff in. Was this a cruel joke? A cosmic conspiracy? It seemed like the more things I put on the porch, the more stuff appeared around my house. No matter where I looked there were things that had “Lump” written all over them. In what seemed like a blink of the eye, my once calm and serene home had turned into an oversized Jack in the Box filled with material nightmares. I never knew when something was going to pop up and shock the shit out of me. This went on for quite some time. From random tee-shirts to ersatz DVDs to god-awful cologne, there was no end to the perverse treasure hunt my house had become.

Slowly, very slowly, the Lump’s things were starting to become scarcer by the day. My house was becoming a one-person residence again. Truth be told, it was nice to have my closets back and not have to do someone else’s disgusting dishes every day. The Lump was a lot of things but “clean” was not one of them. I enjoy coming home to peace and quiet rather than him and his slacker friends playing violent video games at three in the morning. My life is getting back to normal and I’m pretty damn happy about it. There are still days when I come across a random thing or two The Lump left behind. Yeah, it still hurts but I’ve found an excellent remedy for the lingering pain. I throw the shit in the trash. Except for the sweatshirts, I’m keeping them.