THE EXES IN MY IPOD: A Playlist of the Men Who Rocked Me to Wine Country

by Lisa M. Mattson

  I let the music pour through my thin walls into the hallway. I figured my neighbors could tell the state of my relationships by the volume of my stereo—not just my choice of song. When Michael knocked, I casually yelled, “Just a minute,” even though I was standing in front of my entertainment center next to the door. I tugged at my jean shorts and straightened my tank top.

  Michael’s body filled my doorway. He forced a smile, dressed like he’d just walked off a ritzy golf course. His eyes were buggy and blood-shot, making me feel bad for the rejection he was about to receive. I swept my left arm through the air to usher him in. He ducked under the doorway, then stood with his back against the wall near my front door. His fingers were firmly laced together, arms resting at his waist. His biceps flexed, and I remembered how much I’d loved having his big arms around me. Whenever his blue eyes looked down to mine, he glanced away. The knots in my stomach tugged tighter. He stood there, almost impatiently, like a child sent to the corner for a “time out.” I turned off the music.

  “Would you like to have a seat?” The words blurted from my mouth; my nerves were doing the talking. There were two places in my tiny apartment to sit: the cup-shaped couch and the double bed where we’d slept together four times. I didn’t know what else to say, so I stood by the entertainment center and twirled my ponytail.

  “I’d rather stand.” He glanced over to the bed. The room was eerily quiet. The hardwood floors creaked, as I walked back over to the couch and plopped down, letting my feet dangle over the edge. We looked like two strangers making small talk in a doctor’s office lobby.

  “Soooooo…” I watched him shift his body weight back and forth in his leather loafers. My coffee table separated us. “What’s going on?” I gripped the edge of my papasan. The possibility that he had actually stopped by that day to beg for my forgiveness now seemed highly unlikely. I’d never seen such frigidity from my velvet teddy bear.

  He parted his lips. No words came out. He lowered his head and took a deep breath, then exhaled loudly. I could feel his anxiety churning in the air. My nails dug into the wicker frame of my couch. My eyes fixed on his face.

  Michael ran his hands through his hair. “I’m not sure how to say this.” He turned his body toward me. His mouth drooped. I noticed dark bags under his eyes for the first time. It was a look of weakness I’d never seen before. I sat up straight and leaned forward, my nerves frazzled by anticipation.

  “Okay.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to do it.” He laced his hands behind his head and bent over halfway to the floor. His face flushed a deep red. I held my breath.

  “Are you familiar with Chlamydia?” His eyes raised to meet mine.

  Oh no, he didn’t. I slumped back into the couch, nearly kicking the coffee table. I felt like I’d swallowed a cinder block. Hearing a guy use four-syllable words had always been a turn-on—until that moment. The question came so far out of left field, I had no game plan. My cheeks were on fire.

  I gritted my teeth. “Yeeessss.” I looked at Michael—the guy whom I’d believed had the best husband credentials since Lance. His pretty face was as red as a stop sign. A higher power was trying to teach me a valuable lesson about dating: Disease does not discriminate. Michael was a preppy jock who’d be writing prescriptions in a few years. I glanced over at the wicker trashcan next to my couch. The silence felt awkward and tense, like the moment before Sinéad O’Connor ripped the Pope’s picture on Saturday Night Live.

  “Wuh…well…uh.” His voice staggered on. “My doctor says I contracted Chlamydia, and I’ve only slept with two girls in the last two years.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “And Shari told me she doesn’t have it, so I figured that I must have…” He looked at my scowling face and his lips stopped moving.

  I felt a monster awaken inside me. I leapt from the couch and threw my hands on my hips. “You see that blue trash can right there?” My arm shot to the floor. “Inside, you’ll find the results from a slew of tests I had done because you cheated on me.” My ponytail whipped around my head. “You’re welcome to read it yourself. You can’t miss it.” I grabbed the wicker wastebasket, fished out the card and threw it at him. “Take that back to Shari!” My heart fluttered like a coked-up hummingbird, as I stared at the side of his face.

  He kept his eyes locked on the paper lying on the floor. I hadn’t gone “Rage Against the Machine” on a man since fifth grade when my dad was drunk in the backseat of Mom’s Camaro, and I’d slapped him. Michael scrunched his nose. Wrinkles formed on his forehead. I stood next to the coffee table and watched his mind do the math.

  “I just don’t see how this could have happened if…” He rubbed his fingers through his thick, blonde hair once again.

  My hands anchored on my hips. “I think you need to go back to Tampa.” I wanted to kick him square in the nuts. Not only had he accused me of being a disease carrier, he’d believed her before even talking to me. I’d promised him complete and total honesty from day one. I’d given him my heart. He’d almost given me the clap. I took a deep breath and tucked my bangs behind my ears. His shoulders were hunched over like a quarterback who’d just lost a big game. I shook my head and strutted past him to the door.

  I tugged hard on my front doorknob. “Anything else I can do for you today?” My waitressing instincts kicked in to combat the anger and awkwardness. My back pressed against the open door. I looked up and caught a glimpse of his ashamed, blue eyes and forced myself to look away.

  Michael shuffled toward me, then paused in the doorway. Only a few inches separated us. His citrusy smell made me nauseous. He leaned toward me. “I wish we could go back in time.”

  I turned my head and slowly closed the door in his face. My forehead rested against the cool, wooden door, as I listened to him pacing in my hallway before sulking down the stairs. I never expected an end like this. I exhaled deeply, letting the shock and anger spill from me. The lesson was so hard to swallow, it would take me ten years to realize what Michael had taught me about love: Even when my relationship wasn’t built around sex, it could still be destroyed by sex.

  I walked over to the purple card and plucked it off the hardwood floor. Back to square one. I sighed deeply, letting his news sink in. Then I stepped into the kitchen and slid the card under the sand dollar magnet on my freezer. The most important test of my semester didn’t happen on a college campus, and I needed a daily reminder.

  RAUL

  “BRASS MONKEY”

  Beastie Boys

  REWIND: I leaned forward on the barstool and plucked my Dixie cup off the worn-wood bar. A haze of smoke lingered above two pool tables at the back of the narrow room. This was our place—a dark, cloudy bar with black poster board covering the windows, and a trickle of bikers and head bangers making their way in the dented, metal door.

  I lifted the clear cup to my lips with a smirk. “So this is the kind of place you bring girls you’re courting.” The ice-cold Sam Adam’s Honey Brown tickled my tongue as it flowed down my throat. Two beefy guys with barbed wire tattoos sharpened cues next to the pool table. I glanced down at my blue Express dress shirt and strappy sandals. I must have looked as out of place as Kim Kardashian at a Kentucky truck stop. Raul always took me to Society Hill on South Beach on Saturday nights. It seemed like a foreign country compared to the velvet ropes, thumping Lamborghinis and $20 cover charges lining Washington Avenue just yards away from our barstools.

  “I don’t need to court you anymore.” Raul’s full lips spread into a Cheshire Cat grin. “You’re my woman.” His deep voice emphasized the “wooh” in “woman.” Then, he burped. I rolled my eyes in disgust.

  I ran my fingernails playfully through his wiry, black hair. “You never courted me in the first place, smart ass.” He kept his hair buzzed super-short to fend off unruly curls he hated almost as much midterms. But Raul wore a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that made him look like a science geek. He reminded me of the boys in school
who always sat in the front row taking copious notes—a constant reminder that looks can be deceiving.

  “Come on!” Raul grabbed the edge of my barstool and pulled me closer to him. “You gotta be shitting me. Would you rather go hold hands at some sappy movie, Bro?” His biceps flexed tight against the cuffs of his blue-striped T-shirt. Raul always spoke with an air that was half confident, half carefree, and his terms of endearment ranged from “bro” to “baby” to “beeatch.” I found it boyishly attractive sometimes, repulsive others.

  I shook my head in disbelief as he squeezed my upper thighs. “Dinner and a movie would be nice once in a while.” We’d gone out to dinner just once—Outback Steakhouse on Valentine’s Day about four weeks into our relationship—and I’d paid. I cocked my head and glared at him. “You’re lucky I’m not a whiny bee-atch.”

  Dating Raul was an exercise in unconventional relationship wisdom that marveled me some days and frustrated me others. His free hand moved from his beer to the thigh of my jeans. I watched my thigh disappear under his gigantic knuckles, hands big enough to palm a basketball. He’d mastered the petting, but nothing else.

  An evil smile engulfed his face. “Movie dates are boring.” He pulled my leg on his barstool. “Why would you want to go sit in the dark with someone you want to talk to and be quiet for two hours, Bro?” I gazed at his baby face, studying his thoughts. You can’t get to know someone if you only go to the movies together. It was one of the many golden lessons in life that slacker instilled in me, and it took me years to realize it. Raul began rubbing my calf. I loved how he always touched my skin as soon as it was exposed: shoulders, stomach or ankles. His touch made my ears muffle the words coming out of his mouth. Raul’s affection was a temporary concealer for our problems, just like make-up that covers big zits.

  My fingers bridged over the rim of the cup. I nodded my head and propped my right leg onto his hip. Raul looked deep into my eyes. “You’re the one who wanted this, remember?” He could have passed for Daniel Tosh’s twin brother from Tosh.O with slightly fuller lips and a bigger nose, but the same dirty mouth and foul sense of humor.

  I tucked my bangs behind my ears and smiled at the plastic pitcher of beer sitting between us. “Yeah, yeah, thanks for the intervention.” Five months before, I didn’t know him. I didn’t know that bar. After the unsettling break-up with Michael, my weekly schedule revolved totally around work and school. No television. No dates. No social life. When other Florida International University students were gearing up to party all weekend, I washed my uniforms and prepared for four, back-to-back shifts at The Cheesecake Factory. My five-step plan for financial success involved a strict financial budget, an even stricter diet and a relentless drive to graduate with honors—not a full-blown relationship with a Puerto Rican kid from Hialeah who burped in my face.

  He raised his beer cup. “Somebody needed to come along and wake you up, woman.” Raul grinned between sips. “You needed a man to set you straight.” He emphasized the first syllable of every word. Raul had tucked me under his carefree wing the first week of my second semester, and my world immediately had taken a 180-degree turn. The responsible girl had gone to recess. Nearly two years of opportunity for creating epic college memories—my sophomore year at Kansas State and half my junior year at FIU—had passed me by while I’d picked up double shifts and memorized lecture notes. My determination to make lots of money and graduate with honors had bordered on obsession before meeting Raul.

  I squealed and play-punched him in the arm. “Whatever, you ass! That’s why you kept pursuing me? I needed you, huh?” I’d met Raul on my first day of class at FIU’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications. We were the same age with the same major in public relations, so I thought we’d have a lot in common. He’d asked for my number at the end of our first Media Law and Ethics lecture, then announced that he’d be dropping the class because he could “put off an elective this boring” for another semester. At the time, no room existed in my focused world for the complications of a relationship. Period. After a pizza delivery pseudo-date with an aspiring actor—who left the next day for a casting call in Orlando and never called again and a “study” date with David, the saltwater fish salesman, who thought smoking weed was foreplay—my goose was cooked. I went cold turkey. My two-year string of humbling break-ups had finally spooked me into abstinence. I simply didn’t have the strength to carry any more ex-boyfriend baggage. Two months of birth control pills were unnecessarily ingested, which seemed like reason to celebrate. I bought a pet iguana to keep me company and named him “Dax.”

  Raul pushed my hair from my face. “I kept calling you because you’re cool. And you’re pretty.” He delivered his compliment like a snarky third grader. “You see. I am an emotional guy.”

  I huffed into my beer. “Whatever.” My eyes rolled back. My eyeballs hurt after every barstool conversation with Raul. “You called me because you liked it.” I wrapped my lips flirtatiously around the edge of my cup. He pinched my exposed stomach. I batted him away, tugging at the sides of my tight, wide-collared top. He was about as emotional as Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator. On our first date, Raul had sat on his favorite barstool at Society Hill, asking naughty questions that ranged from the craziest place I’d ever had sex to the most erotic spot on my body. We’d made out in the ripped seats of his beat-up Honda like horny teenagers. For an hour, he’d begged and begged me to invite him upstairs, like a kid who wanted his Halloween candy.

  While Raul had sucked on my neck and nibbled at my side on our first date—already deploying my shared secrets against me—a bright idea had flown into my tipsy head: I will use him. I’d have emotionally detached sex with him the way many ex-boyfriends had done with me. I’d told him my rules and intentions before walking into my apartment: “I’m not interested in a relationship.” I was in control of the date and my love life. I never expected Raul to call me again; I didn’t really want him to.

  “You’re damn right.” He leaned into me, pressing his lips to mine. Raul’s kisses were always luscious and sensual, just like John’s. I loved the feeling of his mouth engulfing my lips. Raul didn’t have the thick goatee, straight hair and square chin like the Cuban guys, but he definitely had the Latino kissing technique mastered. Jedi Master mastered.

  He pulled back and looked into my eyes. “But then I got to know you, Baby.” A big grin spread across my face. Raul always knew when to shut down his smart-ass hydrant and spray on the charm.

  I reached for my beer. “I told you I was a nice girl.” The fact that a one-night stand had turned into six months of exclusivity gave me a false sense of hope that I could have a long, healthy relationship after years of giving it up too early. Within a week of our first date, those late nights and long afternoons of dissecting court cases about freedom of speech were interrupted by unexpected knocks at my door. Raul would duck under my doorway with a six-pack of Rolling Rock in one hand and his Les Paul guitar in the other. He’d thumb through my CD collection, but always chose the Beastie Boys and cranked up “Brass Monkey.” Almost two decades later, “Brass Monkey” makes even more sense as our song because all we ever did together was drink and make out. We’d both been twenty-one for less than one year, and the liberating thrill of being able to drink in public, legally, had yet to wear off. Raul’s drink of choice was beer and his choice of job paid very little, so my palate for wine remained fledgling.

  I grabbed the nape of his neck and pulled him closer. “Just because we’ve been together this long doesn’t get you off the hook.” I threw back my head with a laugh. “You gotta respect your woman.” I mimicked him with my best WOOH-man. I pressed my lips softly to his, then tugged at his upper lip.

  His luscious lips surrounded mine, then he pulled away. “This is the longest I’ve ever been with one girl.” His fingers laced with mine. I glanced down at his size eleven tennis shoes hanging over the foot rail. The boy had big everything—and I mean everything—except manners.


  “I’m not surprised,” I replied with a smirk. “Most girls wouldn’t put up with your crap for longer than a month.” The only way to win with Raul was to play his game—two quick jabs to follow his. I think it felt so good to act like the cocky teenager again because I’d grown up way too fast.

  But a relationship can only run so long on great sex and draft beer alone. Before Raul had even ordered the second pitcher of beer on our first date, he’d already ticked way too many boxes in the deal-breaker column: the twelve-inch differential in our heights; his lackadaisical attitude toward college; his constant use of the words “bro” and “dude;” his gushing pride over the fact he still lived at home with his parents and abuela and planned to milk that security blanket for as long as he could; his zodiac sign (Sagittarius—the bachelor); his faded, black Honda sedan with the broken AC and missing front bumper; his distain for Latin dancing; and his lack of a full-time job. He spent every other weekend being a deck hand at the Aventura yacht club, but insisted on working only forty hours per month when I clocked forty each week. And there was still that distant fear that he too might screw like a monkey.

  “Whatever, my ass.” Raul raised his beer to his lips. “This works. We fit.” His eyes moved from my face to my thighs, as he glided one finger down my stomach. “We have fun. That’s why we’re together.”

  I looked him in the eye. “You can have fun and be responsible at the same time.” I remembered those first impromptu visits to my apartment, him sitting on the edge of my bed strumming chords while old-school rap blasted in our ears, and a stack of study cue cards weighed heavy in my lap.

  “I’ll have plenty of time to do grown-up stuff when I’m old.” He pushed his thick glasses up his big nose. “The real world isn’t going anywhere.”

  I peered at the liquor bottles on the back bar. “I guess you’re right.” I rubbed his thigh through his jeans. Raul constantly put my days of sacrificing happiness today for career success tomorrow into perspective. Most nights, I’d get five hours of sleep, but the lack of rest didn’t seem to affect my grades. When I should have crammed for quizzes, I slurped White Russian daiquiris (relapse!) with him at Fat Tuesday. I’d even dropped my International Business class and started taking guitar lessons, hoping to become good enough to strum with Raul or my brother and mom, who both played a mean “Proud Mary.” To complete my transformation to a new woman, Jorge chopped off my long, permed curls and sculpted my hair into chunky, straight layers like Jennifer Aniston’s on Friends.