The Last Song

Still blogging away alongside three other talented bloggers.  Each week, one of us chooses a topic and we all post a blog entry on that topic, usually on Thursdays.  (Usually we are on time.  Usually.  Ok, sometimes.)

Here are the links to the other fabulous blogs:

Merryland Girl

Froggie 

Moma Rock 

This week, I asked everyone to write about that moment you knew you had to break up with someone.  If you’ve never been the breaker, write about the moment you knew you had to end a friendship or other relationship.  Here’s my take:

I’ve had my share of boyfriends; as such, I’ve had my share of break-ups.  Perhaps I’m lucky:  I’ve instigated the majority of the endings.  Or maybe that just means I’m picky.  Or hard to get along with.  I don’t know.  As logic dictates, I’ve broken up with different guys for different reasons.  More often than I’d care to admit, the reason involved the introduction of another guy into the mix.  What can I say?  I was young and the grass is always greener.  Of course, it never really was.

Between my first and second marriages, I didn’t date a whole lot, as I was already a parent.  The first guy I dated was someone I knew from law school and who had separated from his wife.  He lived out of state (where he clerked for a Federal judge) for the first year we dated, and after that, he decided to move to Chicago, closer to me.  He took an apartment on the Gold Coast, and we spent a fair amount of time together.  I liked him for many reasons:  he was hands-down one of the smartest people I’d ever known, he was soft-spoken and well mannered, he was open to being a stepfather, and he was easygoing.  He wasn’t the best-looking guy I’d ever dated, but he was cute enough, and anyway I’d already endured the downside of dating really good-looking guys (which is a blog topic for another day, but let’s just say it does, indeed, have its downsides).  As everyone does, this guy came with faults.  He was sometimes too soft-spoken, too quiet.  I come from a long-line of loud Italians; I’m not used to quiet, and soft-spoken is not in our vocabulary.  My Italian relatives would have chewed him up and spit him out.  He was also too easygoing.  He never had an opinion on anything.  I’d ask, “Where should we go for dinner?” and he’d say, “I don’t care.”  I’d ask, “What movie should we see?” and he’d say, “I don’t care.”  I’d ask, “Which TV show do you prefer?” and he’d say, “I don’t care.”  And he really didn’t care.  Which bothered me – how could he not ever have a preference?  I will wrestle the remote out of your hand if there is something I want to watch, and I’ll leave the room and go read a book if I lose the battle.  I care that much.  He didn’t have a favorite anything:  song, food, color, book.  At times, I felt like I was dating a jellyfish.  Worse, he was a loud chewer and loud drinker.  Ridiculously loud.  It was like eating with a large, bespectacled squirrel.  For a somewhat slightly built guy, he chomped like the Hulk.  I never felt comfortable pointing it out but it drove me crazy.  (One day, we were standing around my kitchen eating what he made sound like handfuls of marbles and talking with my friend, Michelle, who was telling a story.  Mid-sentence, she stopped, looked at him and said, “ . . .  and ohmygod are you a loud eater!”  I hid my smile.  I never loved her more than I loved her that day.)

So, there was the good and there was the bad, and things moved along.  We took a few trips together, one to his home state where I met his parents, lovely people who masticated at a normal volume, and then later to Los Angeles, one of my favorite places in the whole world.  I showed him my most loved sites:  places I’d lived, places I’d hung out, the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.  We had a decent time.  And then he insisted we go to The Guitar Center in Hollywood.  He dabbled at acoustic guitar, so I said okay; after all, the store is rather iconic, and it held other memories for me of a different guy I’d briefly dated when I’d lived there years earlier.  We walked around the store, and he led me over to the electric guitars, the same instrument played – quite well – by my long-ago ex. 

And then it got weird.  So very, very weird because he proceeded to strum the electric guitar (it wasn’t plugged in, thank god) and TO SING TO ME.  IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STORE.  And he chose one of my very favorite songs in the whole world, I’ll Be There for You by Bon Jovi.

Now, for some women, this moment would have felt remarkably romantic, something out of a rom-com movie or chick-lit book.  Um, have I mentioned how much I hate those two genres?  His intentions aside, the moment did not feel romantic.  It felt nauseating.  I?  Was mortified.  I wanted to disappear, to curl up into a teeny-tiny ball and roll away, away from the store I used to love, away from the people staring at us, away from the guy I knew and thought I liked.  My face burned and time stood still as I silently prayed he would stop. 

And it was at that moment I knew I had to end the relationship.

I cannot honestly say I broke up with him solely because he serenaded me – badly – in the middle of The Guitar Center in Hollywood.  It was more of a “straw-that-broke-the-loudly-chomping-camel’s-back” moment.  It took that event for me to realize the totality of the situation, to see that we truly were not compatible.  He was the kind of guy who serenaded a girl in public – badly – and he thought I was the kind of girl who liked that kind of thing.  I’m fairly certain the setting, too, provided the perfect break-up backdrop; after all, the place already reminded me of someone else, someone who could make any guitar come alive in a way that made it look easy, someone with presence and strong opinions, someone with whom I used to debate politics and who knew exactly what food he wanted for dinner.  Perhaps the contrast sparked something I couldn’t before see.  Either way, the die was cast.

I didn’t stay friends with the Guitar Center Serenader; he’s one of the few exes with whom I’ve lost touch.  I am still friends with the L.A. guy I dated, the one who played the guitar well, and I consciously try to associate Hollywood and The Guitar Center with him and not the mad, bad crooner.  In the end, I made the right call.  I simply could not imagine a life with someone with no opinion, someone who didn’t care one way or the other about much of anything, someone who chewed so loudly I wanted to lunge across the table and hold his lips together.  I envisioned years of cringing whenever I saw him pick up his guitar, of biting my lip until it bled whenever he tried to sing along with the car radio, of wondering how long it would take to hop on a plane, fly to the place where my L.A. ex lives, and share a burrito, talking about politics and music, his strong opinions music to my ears.