Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me.

by Ben Karlin.

Foreword.

I Think My Son Is a Catch.

by Barbara Karlin.

My son is a real catch and shame on any girl who's ever thought otherwise.

He's tall, but not too. He runs marathons and scales mountains. And of course he has those gorgeous blue eyes. And on top of it all, he's funny. Of course I didn't think everything he did was so funny when he was a kid. I used to tell him "that's not so funny" all over the house. Back then I called him a smart aleck but now I call him "creative." If you make money from being a smart aleck, you're creative. If you don't make money, you're a putz. So, he's creative. Come on, girls, why would you break up with my creative son?

And a good time he'll show you. You want fine restaurants? My Benjamin knows them all-and he isn't afraid to spend his money. Not on me of course, but that's not what I'm here to talk about. You want travel and adventure? He's been all over the world. Without me. A great communicator you want? Well, I know he'll call you more than he calls me. You want someone who can sing and dance? Forget about it.

Catches like my Benjamin you don't find every day. Did I mention he can cook? I'm not talking brisket or chicken soup. I'm talking very fancy food I've never heard of. He'll make things so pretty you won't know whether to eat them or wear them. And then he makes these funny little jokes about you not appreciating it on the same "level" as he does. I'm not sure what that means. But if you want to try organic fiddlehead ferns, he's your man.

Whenever a girl would dump my son-and he had his share of heartbreak as a boy-I would always say the same thing to him: "Those girls are all fools and idiots. They don't know what they're missing." He would always say, "You're just saying that because you're my mom." He had me there.

But I'd like to think just because he's my son, and I gave birth to him and fed him from my breast and raised him, doesn't mean I can't look at things objectively. Sure I can! I guess you can tell how much I love my son and what a great catch he is. So if you catch him, please tell him to call his mother.

Introduction.

by Nick Hornby.

At the time of writing, I have been happily married for thirteen months, to a woman I have been living with for eight years. Thanks to the book you are currently holding in your hand, the implications of this are now clear to me: not only have I learned nothing whatsoever for the best part of a decade, but also the things I did learn are beginning to fade disastrously from the mind, in much the same way that the five or six facts gleaned from my formal education have almost disappeared. (I used to pride myself on being able to remember three of the Chartists' six demands, but the three, I now realize, have become one: universal suffrage. That must have been a big one, though, right? The other five were surely all minor disgruntlements, by comparison.) No, instead, reading about all this learning reconciles me to the future, when I have messed this marriage up and I'm back on the singles circuit, aged fifty-nine, say, or sixty-seven, or eighty-two; the success of inst.i.tutions like the University of the Third Age demonstrates that our thirst for learning remains unquenched even in our twilight years.

It is perhaps best not to a.n.a.lyse too closely what exactly it is that these writers have gleaned from their romantic mishaps. Andy Selsberg, for example, has clasped to his bosom the lesson that holding grudges is fun. (Well, der! What did he think relationships were for? Mutual support, raising children, looking after each other in old age? And how old are you, Andy?) Rodney Rothman learns that the girl who broke his heart doesn't actually remember dating him in the first place. Dan Savage found out that he wasn't interested in women. This is all useful stuff, but one can see that anyone doubtful about the intellectual value of romantic trauma might still need a little more evidence of its efficacy.

What strikes one about these essays is that many of the authors seem to have found contentment in their relationships since since, and there is a suggestion implicit in the book's t.i.tle that through dumping came wisdom, and through wisdom domestic bliss. I'm not so sure. A good, if tasteless, comparison (but one I am allowed to make because of my nationality) is with Londoners during the Blitz: did bombs stop dropping on us because we had somehow learned enough to prevent them from dropping? I would argue not. I would argue that other factors, too complicated to go into here (but see Winston Churchill, The Second World War The Second World War, volumes two and three), were responsible. The major, but vital, contribution of Londoners was their refusal to let their morale be broken by the relentless bombings. And then, one day in May 1941, the Germans took their firepower elsewhere.

Well, isn't that it? It seems that the major, but vital, contribution of men to the war of attrition that takes place between the ages of thirteen and about thirty-five, if you're lucky, is our refusal to let our morale be broken. Cheese-eating surrender monkeys would open a packet of char-grilled steak-flavored peanuts, crawl under our sports-themed duvet covers, and stay there until we were certain that the last sparks of s.e.xuality had withered and died. We didn't do that, mostly because we were too stupid. We ignored the air-raid wardens and ran up and down the streets waving torches.

In those formative years, we got creamed, mashed, p.i.s.sed on (I'm speaking figuratively here, but there are, of course, some people who like that sort of thing, and it's not my intention to judge them); we got told we were stupid, f.e.c.kless, reckless, scared, boring, unserious, too serious, too bookish, nerdy, unattractive, too drunk, too stoned, too sporty, too couch-potatoey, too outdoorsy, too political, too insular, too angry, too drippy, too suspicious, too complacent, too ambitious, not ambitious enough, too poor. I know I got told that, anyway. (I'll bet you that somebody, somewhere, got told he was too handsome, too successful, too kind, too thoughtful, and too good in bed.) It is only fair to point out that we gave as good as we got during this time. We sent the RAF out there night after night to cheat, lie, and refuse to commit. Most of the people in this book, creative types all, were refused admission on medical grounds, although I suspect the contributors who were in bands were involved in some of the terrible carpet-bombing that went on during the twenties. (Indeed, some of the zeal shown by our fellow males made some of us feel a little queasy.) There were no winners, and there was n.o.body who could seize the moral high ground. And then one day, maybe even one day in May, it stopped. We woke up in the morning, went to a bar or a party or onto the Internet, and somebody there liked us, and married us, and there was a new dawn of peace, prosperity, and babies.

Cynics might say that last word had a great deal to do with what happened. Cynics might say these beautiful, fantastic women who have taken us on actually looked at us a few years ago, found us wanting, and have since come back to us, having argued themselves into believing that, actually, we aren't that bad, all things considered. I married the one who dumped you, and you married the one who dumped me, but that's the story. Effectively we become the DVD of Elf Elf that you ignore in the rental store at nine o'clock on a Friday night, on the presumption there will be something better (or at least, something more fulfilling, more complex, and that you haven't seen twice before) on the shelves somewhere. And guess what you end up going home with? Well, that's what we are to these beautiful, fantastic women: Elves. that you ignore in the rental store at nine o'clock on a Friday night, on the presumption there will be something better (or at least, something more fulfilling, more complex, and that you haven't seen twice before) on the shelves somewhere. And guess what you end up going home with? Well, that's what we are to these beautiful, fantastic women: Elves.

Here are the t.i.tles of some e-mails my wife has sent me in the past few months: "Event reminder: The Wiggles"; "Catering Menu"; "Joint a/c"; "Various boring"; "New plans for car tax"; "Fishcakes??"; "No fishcakes"; "Fishcakes?!" E-mail hadn't been invented when I was suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous Miss Fortune, of course. But if it had, I would never have believed that anybody for whom I had any kind of romantic feelings would communicate with me in this way. In life during wartime, there were neither fishcakes nor no fishcakes, and e-mails would have t.i.tles like "Sorry," "Last night," "My relationship with Michael," "My actual relationship with Michael," and "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d." These might sound more interesting than the various borings, but they weren't, not really, because they became life itself; there were no children, of course, but there wasn't much else, either. I never had the time or the concentration to write books, and I never even had the time or the concentration to read them, either. Everything was focused on trying to get my romantic life right, and that turned out to be precisely the way to get it disastrously wrong. I get e-mails about fishcakes because there's absolutely nothing to say about the other stuff: it just is is, day after day, and that seems like a miracle. You get a lot more done during peacetime; you even get a love life thrown in.

Lesson#1

s.e.x Is the Most Stressful Thing in the History of the Universe

by Dan Vebber

When I was a child, s.e.x was awesome. Of course, when I was a child, I didn't have to deal with it. s.e.x was what Dan of the Future would one day enjoy, and I saw no reason to obsess about it any more than Present-Day Dan obsesses with . . . what's something old people enjoy? Nice breezes? Let's say nice breezes.

In fact, I never beat off as a kid. I didn't beat off thinking about girls, I didn't beat off thinking about boys, I didn't even beat off thinking about s.p.a.ceships. (This is the point at which people quote me HILARIOUS statistics along the lines of "99 percent of teenage boys m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e, and one percent are liars!" HA! Thank you for your opinion, please return to hosting your Morning Zoo program.) The fact is, not once during my outwardly normal adolescence could I dupe my machinery into getting physically aroused by the mere thought of s.e.x, the touch of my own hand, or p.o.r.n. (Not every guy has a long-standing and storied relationship with p.o.r.n. Some of us honestly don't find it interesting enough to warrant looking past the girls' bad teeth.) When I was seventeen, I started dating Molly Malone. I've changed her name here, but not her full-blooded Irish ethnicity or any of the attendant baggage that implies. Catholic? Check. Shocking red hair and freckles? Check. Overbearing, shillelagh-waving father? Double check. Our senior year of high school, Molly and I were inseparable, and at least as far as the s.e.x thing went, we were perfect for each other: She didn't want to lose her virginity because of her Catholic guilt, and my r.e.t.a.r.ded libido wasn't compelling me to pressure her into it. She was my first real love, breaking through my veneer of irony and cynicism to the point where I actually enjoyed squiring her to a prom with the odious theme "Knights in White Satin."

Molly was a brilliant girl, and translated that brilliance into acceptance to no less of a prominent Ivy League inst.i.tution than Havrard University. (I have flipped the third and fourth letters of the school's name to further protect ident.i.ty.) This is where things started to fall apart, as Molly became increasingly obsessed with the notion that she, with her love of deconstructing wordplay in French poetry, was much smarter than me, with my love of deconstructing the comedic premise behind David Letterman wearing a suit made of Alka-Seltzer. One night we were making out and listening to XTC's "The Mayor of Simpleton," the lyrics of which are a plea from an idiot to a brainy girl along the lines of "I may not be well versed in any topics that would gain me admiration among the intelligentsia, but the one thing I DO know is that I love you." Delighted, Molly pointed out to me, "Aww, it's a song about us!" At the time I took the comment in the spirit of playfulness that was likely intended. But years later, looking back . . . Jesus! What the f.u.c.k was that? More importantly, what the f.u.c.k was wrong with ME that I was so willing to put up with a girlfriend who repeatedly hammered into my head that I was a dumb-a.s.s?

Being a brainless troglodyte, I ended up in Madison at the University of Wisconsin. My existence became an endless blur of dorm-room keggers, advocacy journalism, and focusing my abnormally large reserves of vitriol on fellow students dumb enough to be vexed by the question, "But is it art?" Clarity only seemed possible during the times when Molly and I would visit each other. As these dorm-room visits were the first time we had access to unsupervised beds, we'd spend a lot of time sleeping together. Though for us "sleeping together" was merely the next logical step on our path toward s.e.xual intercourse, as opposed to a euphemism for it. The mere insertion of parts into other parts would have seemed anticlimactic after an evening spent solving the Gordian knot of balancing two sleeping bodies on a single mattress, waking up with severely restricted blood flow in at least one limb, and overlooking each other's post-Chinese-food morning breath.

As magical as those visits with Molly were, the time spent apart from her became that much more unbearable. This wasn't helped by the fact that Molly was acting totally unreasonably at her new school, engaging in conversation with guys who weren't me and attempting to join social groups that weren't made up of me, me, and me. On some Friday nights she would even choose to attend a book club or act in a play rather than sit alone by her phone waiting for my sobbing call. How could one girl be so heartless?

Our dance of dysfunction and lack of s.e.x continued throughout our freshman and soph.o.m.ore years. We called the whole thing off more times than I can remember, and usually for reasons that were entirely my fault. The ratio of time spent long-distance dating to time spent long-distance broken up gradually decreased, until we agreed to acknowledge what geography had been screaming at us for months: we were no longer together.

The spring of 1991, my junior year, was an exciting time. I had a dorm room to myself, I was drawing a well-regarded daily comic strip for my school paper, and Our Troops had just finished kicking Saddam's a.s.s in the first Gulf War, setting the stage for the peace in the Middle East we enjoy to this day. I had moved on from Molly and was a better man for it, though my inexperience with s.e.x was starting to be a problem. The girls I dated wanted more than a smooch and a b.o.o.b kneading to top off their night. "We should wait until we're ready," I'd declare, usually succeeding in convincing potential partners that I was a sensitive and decent man as opposed to a tragically repressed and inexperienced boy. The problem with this tactic was that a girl, once flattened by my tsunami of sensitive decency, would fall for me even harder, making it that much more difficult to dump her when my well of excuses for putting off s.e.x finally ran dry. Their faces haunt me to this day: the suburban punker who worked the counter at the record store, the doe-eyed lifeguard certified in ma.s.sage, the perky art chick who sc.r.a.ped up roadkill and used it in an installation piece . . . They were nerdy G.o.ddesses all, young and h.o.r.n.y, but I could never make a relationship with them last more than a couple weeks and I was starting to hate myself for it. Such was my state of mind when Molly called me out of nowhere and requested I fly to Boston for the express purpose of having s.e.x.

The specific circ.u.mstances surrounding Molly's offer of virginity loss are admittedly fuzzy, and largely rooted in emotion. But what I do remember with the clarity of tropical fish footage on a Best Buy showroom HDTV is that we were definitely, definitely not in love anymore. Knowing this, I was overcome with the absolute certainty that this "o.r.g.a.s.m-or-bust" odyssey could not possibly end in anything but disaster and embarra.s.sment for both of us. I bought the first plane ticket I could find.

Once I arrived at Havrard, Molly and I went straight to work constructing the infrastructure she deemed necessary for "safe s.e.x." This consisted of four forms of birth control, which, per Molly's instructions, would need to be utilized simultaneously.

One: The Rhythm Method.

There was a window of three or four days in Molly's cycle that she had calculated to be "safe." That window didn't open until a couple days into my visit, so we killed time, probably walking the Freedom Trail or some s.h.i.t.

Two: Condoms.

We went to purchase these together, studying the boxes until we were confident we'd found the thickest, least comfortable, most spermicide-drenched contraceptives science could produce.

Three: The Sponge.

I'm thirty-seven and I still don't know quite how these are supposed to work. More on this later.

Four: The Number-One Rule.

"DO NOT e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e while inside me! Pull out the second you think it's getting dangerous."

In retrospect, she may not have wanted to get pregnant.

Beginning with her phone call, and throughout our quest to purchase birth control, Molly's constant mantra was, "We've got to get this over with." Is there any sentence in the English language that conveys less pa.s.sion or romance? Thanks to the last moments leading up to our attempt at s.e.x, Molly provided me with at least one: "Just so you know, this is going to be really painful for me, and I'm probably going to be bleeding all over the place." This final sweet nothing imparted, and the fortress of contraception having been built (including Molly's mood-killing last-minute dash behind a closed bathroom door so she could have privacy as she put the sponge in), it was finally time for me to get a b.o.n.e.r and f.u.c.k my way into adulthood. Three, two, one . . . go! Go! The light is green! The ref fired his starter pistol! Cut the yellow wire RIGHT NOW or the bomb goes off!

It didn't take Molly long to notice something was up, or more accurately, wasn't. After all, whenever we had gone at it with the unstated understanding that no s.e.x was forthcoming, I'd grow a cop's flashlight in my pants. (My point is not to imply that I have a particularly large p.e.n.i.s, but simply to state via colorful metaphor that my b.o.n.e.rs came more easily when I wasn't picturing Molly bleeding to death.) Molly's reaction to my lack of stiffness was, at first, sympathetic, if confused ("It's okay. Take your time."), but quickly s...o...b..lled into impatient, nastier territory ("I'M doing everything right. What's wrong with YOU?"). After a couple futile hours of frustration, hair pulling, and being flat-out belittled by My Wild Irish Rose, I put on my clothes and exited Molly's dorm room into the drizzly Havrard night, alone.

On that walk, I ate half a bag of white-cheddar popcorn and came to the conclusion that would screw me up forever: I was incapable of having s.e.x. Never mind that no one but the randiest of p.o.r.n stars would have been able to get it up amidst the s.h.i.t-storm of stress, fear, and inexperience I was dealing with. Such logical explanations were obliterated by my feelings of failure and shame, compounded by Molly's anger that her virginity problem wouldn't be solved anytime soon.

The next night we went to a party, where I embarra.s.sed Molly by conversing with one of her more bearable friends about our shared obsession with the band Devo. "These people go to Havrard! They don't want to talk about stupid s.h.i.t like Devo!" Molly screamed. I, in turn, exploded at her flat-out wrong a.s.sessment of her friend's degree of interest in Akron's proudest sons, and suddenly we were in the fight that ended our relationship once and for all. We agreed to avoid each other over the six remaining days of my trip. (Why I didn't just fly home on an earlier flight is lost to the mists of time, but knowing me, I probably didn't want to inconvenience the airline.) I spent my nights freezing on Molly's couch, and my days reading Vonnegut outside an Au Bon Pain. I think I may have had a nervous breakdown at some point, as I distinctly remember curling up next to Molly's dorm-room fireplace, sobbing uncontrollably about nothing and everything. (And what kind of bulls.h.i.t dorm room has a fireplace in it, anyway? f.u.c.k Havrard.) In the end, after all we went through, the most enduring lesson I learned from Molly is that regardless of whether or not my parts work on a given try, s.e.x is always the most stressful thing in the history of the universe. After (and because of) our failed attempt at Sin, it took me three more years to officially lose my virginity. And to this day, despite being blissfully married and having fathered a kick-a.s.s son, I consider myself a victim of Post-Traumatic s.e.x Disorder. (If I've inadvertently stolen this term from a struggling stand-up comedian, I humbly apologize.) Every single s.e.xual encounter of my life has been preceded by feelings of overwhelming dread, because no matter how many hundreds of times I've hardened up and rocked it in there, part of me is still that confused twenty-year-old, staring at my flaccid shame, getting berated for being defective. Worse still, the mere whiff of white-cheddar popcorn still brings back all the hopeless feelings I went through in the rain that night almost twenty years ago. And I used to love that s.h.i.t!

I did, however, learn to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e at age twenty-four, making me the only man on earth to lose his virginity to a girl before losing it to himself. And if that fact doesn't bring a tear of hope to your eye, then I'm sorry, but you simply aren't human.

Lesson#2

Girls Don't Make Pa.s.ses at Boys with Fat a.s.ses.

by Andy Richter.

My parents divorced when I was four, and afterwards my brother, mother, and I moved into my grandparents' house, where a particularly bone-crushing form of matriarchal rule was practiced. At first my grandmother protested against having to care for me while my mother worked, and insisted that I be enrolled in the Jack and Jill Nursery School so that I wouldn't cramp her Margaret Dumont of Mayberry lifestyle. Her protests were soon proven to be just a way to f.u.c.k with my mother, waste our money, and make a difficult time in my mom's life even more difficult, as most days my grandma kept me out of Jack and Jill and made me her sidekick on an endless round of shopping trips, bridge game lunches, and ladies' auxiliary something-or-others.

On one such excursion, my grandmother and I were in the tearoom of Marshall Field's department store, where we had stopped for a snack. The snack, for me, consisted of a hot fudge sundae, which my grandma asked me if I had enjoyed. After I responded in the affirmative, she asked a question which still chills me.

"Does it taste like more more?"

There were moments in my childhood where a preternatural maturity rose up in me, where the Future Me would seem to pop through to the surface and say, "Hold on, wait a minute, what's going on here is f.u.c.ked up." This, however, was not one of those moments. In this moment a fat little boy was given permission by his adult guardian to order a second second hot fudge sundae, and the fat little boy, being a little boy, said yes. As I tucked into my second sundae, my grandmother smiled, enjoying seeing her grandson made happy. Now, though, I imagine there was more to that smile. I like to think that that smile was a sly wink to all the women who would someday not f.u.c.k me, and a f.u.c.k-you to all those who might. hot fudge sundae, and the fat little boy, being a little boy, said yes. As I tucked into my second sundae, my grandmother smiled, enjoying seeing her grandson made happy. Now, though, I imagine there was more to that smile. I like to think that that smile was a sly wink to all the women who would someday not f.u.c.k me, and a f.u.c.k-you to all those who might.

Now it is not my intention to get all victimy, as I know just as well as the next guy how to put down a spoon. And I don't really think that the women in my family were conscious of the fact that by overfeeding me they were channeling their aggression towards the women who might someday steal me away. But, while it might not take a whole village, it definitely takes more than one person to make a fat kid. And the fat kid is what I was, with the "husky" jeans, President's Physical Fitness Test dread, and chafing thighs to prove it.

Navigating the waters of adolescent intergender relations is tricky business for even the most psychologically aerodynamic youngster, but doing it with the added weight of added weight is far more conducive to sinking than swimming.

For the longest time I couldn't fathom how a girl could find me attractive, when there were so many other examples of young manhood burgeoning unfettered. And since I was doing such a fantastic job rejecting myself, it seemed redundant to let the local girls get a crack at rejecting me, too. So, except when absolutely necessary (homecoming dances and proms), I didn't date. At the time, and in later therapy sessions, I would put this down to being the product of two divorces; to being so sh.e.l.l-shocked by the dissolution of my parents' marriage and my mother's subsequent one, that any attempt at a romantic relationship was so deadly important and fraught with eventual domestic doom that I would just rather sit on the sidelines and watch the other kids play the game. Looking back, however, I think a stronger contributing factor to my inaction was simply the fear of having to take my clothes off in front of somebody. Luckily, at some point in college, biology won out and I realized that if I didn't cut out this self-loathing bulls.h.i.t I was never going to get laid. And to my surprise, I was very good at getting naked. A genius, even. G.o.d bless artsy girls and booze!

I am now on the southern end of forty, married, and the father of two, and my weight is what it should be for a man my age, a health concern. This is because of my wife, whose love and affection make me feel safe and secure and give me a place in the world to really be. And while I really do believe in and truly know unconditional love, I don't want to give the impression that my wife is that kind of a.s.shole who will stand by her man no matter how much he messes his spiritual diaper. No, don't get me wrong: if I was to really bloat up, she might very well leave me. Or at least start sleeping around, bless her heart.

And so, aside from wanting to be with my family for as long as I can, my girth, or occasional lack of it, is almost entirely a professional matter. Now that I'm a grown-up it's as if I've somehow transformed my fear of rejection into a career as a rejection junkie, or at least as somebody with a high rejection tolerance. Why would someone with a history of happiness-crippling body issues choose to go into a line of work so heavily focused on appearance? To a job where it seems I can't read for a part unless the script refers to the character as "expansive," or "a bear of a man," or in the better-written scripts, plain old "fat"?

My coping mechanism is fairly simple, and it goes like this: I have brainwashed myself to believe that if they like me, they're geniuses. And if they don't like me, then they're idiots, and I will gather the pearls I have cast before the hopeless, clueless swine and head off to some other sty. This M.O., which really does work for me, most likely comes from an ironic inheritance from dear old Grandma, and that is the firm belief that I am better than almost everybody.

I have even occasionally been a leading man. Well, that is to say, I have been the lead character in a number of television shows. That they are all no longer on the air could be seen as evidence of a ma.s.s rejection of me, but I know that it's much more complicated than that. (So many factors contribute to the demise of a show that I can't explore them all here: for the sake of s.p.a.ce, let's just boil it down to its essence and say that many of the men and women who run our television networks are gutless c.u.n.ts.) No, I have come to believe that people generally seem to like me. I don't think of myself as the s.e.xual untouchable that I once did, although there is actual scientific data showing that men like me better than women. And I like me, too, so I will keep plugging away, fueled by the belief that people will actually pay money to see me, to accept me just as I am.

Although, of course, it wouldn't hurt to drop a few pounds. It almost never does.

Lesson#3

Beware of Math Tutors Who Ride Motorcycles.

by Will Forte.

Her name was Mich.e.l.le and she was my first serious girlfriend. We had met at a fraternity party one night and somehow, during the course of that evening-aided no doubt by generous portions of cheap beer-I tricked her into liking me. That first meeting turned into a first date and then another date and then soon, she and I were boyfriend and girlfriend. How had I lucked into this? I was dating an attractive woman who didn't care that I dressed like a slob and had a bowl cut and drank myself into oblivion every third night. It was paradise.

One weekend, I went up to Lake Tahoe for a ski race. After a day of getting my a.s.s handed to me by superior ski racers, I was in a bit of a funk-and there was only one person who could cheer me up: my beloved Mich.e.l.le. As this was precell phone and the rotary phone at our condo was locked, I convinced the team to drive by the local grocery store pay phone. My call went to her answering machine, but that was okay-I had a plan. I offered Mich.e.l.le three different times to wait by the phone for a call from me later-8:00, 10:00, and midnight. Satisfied, I jumped in the van and took off for dinner.

After dinner, I convinced the team to swing by the grocery store again. I called Mich.e.l.le at 8:00 on the nose and once again got her answering machine. No big deal. She was probably at dinner or something. With two-thirds of my calling options still available, I hopped back into the van and headed back to the condo.

I returned to the pay phone at exactly 10:00, dialed Mich.e.l.le's number, and once again got her answering machine. Again, no big deal. In fact, I should have seen it coming. 10:00? Mich.e.l.le wouldn't pick 10:00. She'd pick midnight, for sure. She'd want my voice to be the last thing she heard before she went to sleep and dreamed sweet dreams of the two of us sharing our lives together. What a romantic! I walked away from the pay phone, smiling.

By midnight, everyone was pretty drunk. Everyone except me. I mean, somebody had to stay sober enough to drive me to the pay phone. Eventually, a few ski teamers figured out the reason for my sobriety and I caught a considerable amount of s.h.i.t for it. The general consensus was that "Forte's p.u.s.s.ywhipped!"-a charge I vehemently denied. But deep inside, I knew they were right.

I got to the pay phone at 11:50, had a ten-minute fake phone conversation to fend off any would-be phone users, then finally at midnight, jammed my quarters into the coin slot and dialed. "Ring . . . ring . . . ring . . . ring . . ."

"Hi . . ."

"Mich.e.l.le?"

". . . this is Mich.e.l.le. Leave your name and number at the beep." Beep Beep.

f.u.c.k. She must be down the hall in the bathroom or something. I hung up and tried again. Again, answering machine. I hung up and waited for five minutes. Again, answering machine. s.h.i.t, was she okay? Should I call her parents? Maybe she was in a car accident or a library mugging. Was this a valid 911 situation? Wait, maybe I should commandeer the ski team van and haul a.s.s back down to Los Angeles? Soon, the rational minority of my brain took over the irrational majority and I realized there was probably a very good reason she didn't answer the phone. The next morning, I found out this reason.

"Oh, I went to dinner with friends."

"Thank G.o.d. I thought you were hurt or something."

"Sorry, no. It was just a late dinner," she explained. "And then I went out for drinks after that with Steve . . ."

The name Steve hung in the air for what seemed an eternity.

". . . so I didn't get your message until this morning."