Quest for Future Ex-Boyfriend

Scene: it is the end of the empire you live in – allegedly. 

That is the hopeful outlook. In the meantime, in the middle of it all things are getting messy and weird. Turns out, nobody knows how to deal with the collapse of the state. It seems to me we could have learned something by now, that we have collectively lived through enough collapses of states to have figured out what you’re supposed to do now, or how you’re supposed to be now. This is all storytelling though, really. 

Here’s what you’ve always known to be true, because your world has always been on fire, and the world of your mother’s and the world of your mother’s mother and your mother’s mother’s mother’s mother has always been on fire: hug someone, cook for someone, show up, laugh, and try to be there for the healing. 

It is the end of the empire (allegedly) and you are thinking a lot about endings (and beginnings) and, of course, about relationships. Ideally, a relationship doesn’t end until someone dies. That is what we all believe, right? Ideating on death is a sign of a sturdy love and a dreamy romance, at least by traditional standards. From the misty daydream of a crush to the solemn vows of a marriage, the story goes like this: we're together until our souls leave our bodies (and then, ideally, our souls will be together in the after life). Despite the ubiquity of endings, breakups and divorces and getting the ick rarely make it to that story. 

Sometimes, you and your best friend daydream about the kinds of relationships you would have with a celebrity crush, but the two of you are also masochists/hopeless romantics and take pleasure in experiencing pain. When you see a hot person you tell your best friend: I want us to fall in a deep, psychotic whirlwind love that ends in a dramatic tearful argument outside of a restaurant. Maybe I’ll throw a drink in his face first. 

She responds: Ugh, that sounds so fun. 

A couple of years ago, when you were first really learning about the tarot for the first time, you dreaded pulling The Tower, the card in which a giant structure is struck by lightning and exploded and everything and everyone in it goes flying. It’s a scary card that portends an impending disaster. But, then something shifted. Your friend pulls two cards, weighing the decision of a forked path ahead of them. You don’t remember one of the cards, but the other was The Tower. Oh, so, obviously you can’t go down that path, you say to them. Actually, I prefer to go towards The Tower. You can’t avoid The Tower, you realize, and the longer you put off the need for change, the longer you stay put and build your habits and routines and institutions on top of fertile ground for a lightning strike, the worse the disaster is going to be. It’s better to rip the bandaid off as soon as possible because it is the card of endings as beginnings, the card that clears away stagnation to make space for something new to grow. 

You are currently obsessed with the idea of clear cut endings and clear cut beginnings. So many relationships have this blurry beginning (when is your anniversary: the day you met as friends or the day you made it “official”? Did you ever make it official or did you just move in? Did you expect to end up here when you started?) and an obscured, unknown ending (e.g. this relationship is over when we die.)

So, you put this ad up in your dating profile:

In Portland for June, seeking short-term boyfriend* while I’m here.

*Boyfriend is a gender neutral term

This is the proposal: as soon as you land: the relationship is official and all the tepid, getting to know each other dates will be skipped. For better or worse you are now Together.  As soon as you leave the city, the relationship is over. Zero to one hundred to zero.

Matches come in. I’d like to be your foster boyfriend says a hot, androgynous mullet-haver. Another couple of potential boyfriends send in less tantalizing opening lines, relying on the classics: How are you? and What's up? An occasional corny opener comes in: Can you tell me in detail about your hedonistic desires? referring to a line in their own profile about wanting to match with other hedonists. 

All of these conversations fizzle quickly, even the one with androgynous mullet-haver. But eventually a match with potential comes in: a buzzcut with a beard and poses with a banjo in one of his pics, in front of his bike in another. He's muscular but in a fat kind of way, which is to say beefy in the sexiest kind of way. 

Buzzcut says this experiment would be good for both his songwriting and the prospect of regular sex for a month sounds appealing, too. Here is an equivalent exchange: both of you get to muck around in the irrational, emotional playpens of your heart, digging up material for your writing and you get to fuck. Future ex-boyfriend is secured. 

You and Buzzcut exchange a few naughty texts over the app. While you would like to keep it light until the actual experiment starts, you can’t help but start having a bit of cyber sex. You both have so much fun that Buzzcut misses his yoga class.

Before you can have some fun with your future ex-boyfriend in Portland, you have to fly to New York for a gig. I’ll be in Portland early next week :) you text Buzzcut. 

A plane ride, then a bus ride, then a couple of hour long train rides down to SoHo and a couple of meals and then you cancel your gig because the museum that was paying you to Be In Conversation is being occupied by anti-Israeli-apartheid protestors who want the museum to divest from war profiteering, so now you’re just in New York to hang out, then you go dancing at the Bollywood Disco party until 2am where you’re stone cold sober but enjoying the music and then an Uber ride that your friend pays for because you’re trying to being brave and cheap and share a car with your friend back up to Queens but fail to realize that nightlife in New York is real in a way that it is not in other cities and it is 3am now and you need to go to sleep, and then a couple more meals and some vegan soft serve with your friends, and then near the end of your time you’re switching over to the AirTrain and walking through JFK when Buzzcut has still not texted you back. 

And you come to terms with your experiment being over before it started.

You feel a mixture of disappointment and relief, now that your fun little project and hot boy toy has vanished, but also a sense of relief that you can just do whatever the hell you want for the month that you’re in the city.

A couple of beautiful Portland summer days go by where you try to establish the monk-like routine you promised to set yourself up with, the kind of yoga-doing, vegetarian diet, taking a walk in nature ass lifestyle that you’re sure will produce so much writing you can package it into a new book and sell it, but of course fail and mostly walk aimlessly around the neighborhood and cook omelets in your new little kitchen and watch reality TV in your new little living room.

That’s when, 11 days after your initial text, Buzzcut replies:

I'm feeling overwhelmed with dates and romance and I don't have the capacity for this experiment so I will have to pull out.

No fucking shit, Buzzcut. The two of you were so over. You’ve been over.

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