DEAR OLD LOVE
Anonymous Notes to Former Crushes,
Sweethearts, Husbands,Wives
& Ones That Got Away
COMPILED AND EDITED BY
ANDY SELSBERG
WORKMAN PUBLISHING • NEW YORK
Copyright © 2009 by Andy Selsberg
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced—mechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying—without written permission of the publisher.
eISBN 978-0-7611-5825-7
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Cover design by Robb Allen
Hand with Quill Pen, Courtesy of the
New York State Museum, Albany, N.Y. 12230.
Inkwell © Veer
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225 Varick Street
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INTRODUCTION
I got married recently. Commitment can be fun, but all our connections to past loves don’t evaporate upon taking a vow. Part of me is still fifteen, riding go-carts with a girl I wanted to kiss. I continue to berate myself for moments in relationships when I should have been more considerate—deodorant for her birthday? Idiot! And I’ll wonder: Is there a statute of limitations on flowers? Here I am in the shower, trying to finish off quarrels that ended years ago. Or, I’ll picture someone I admired, and think how we could’ve had a fiery affair, if only I’d spoken up. I rue times when I didn’t kiss back, times when I didn’t appreciate what I was getting, times when she didn’t appreciate what I was giving.
As a way to settle into marriage, I wanted to reconcile all this extra desire, fondness, anger, and regret. I can’t sing or play guitar, and direct communication is too sticky and impractical, if not impossible. I needed a bottle for all this, and a sea to throw it into: out there, but not headed anywhere. Luckily, that’s what the Internet is for. And I figured if I had a bunch of old love business to take care of, the rest of the world would too, so I started the Dear Old Love project.
Dear Old Love began as a website: dearoldlove.com. There, people can send messages to former flames and objects of affection—all anonymously. I edit and post what I think are the funniest, the saddest, the sweetest, the smartest, the most illuminating, and, sometimes, the most spiteful. A good Dear Old Love note is the long, sloppy story of a heart, condensed to a line.
In the future there may be many more arms to the Dear Old Love project: coffee mugs, pinball machines, charter schools, a perfume that smells like a breakup conversation in an autumn garden. But for now we’ll start with a book—this book—which is what I envisioned from the beginning. A book because ruminations on love are best digested at the speed of literature, with ink on paper. A book because you can’t really give someone a website: “Happy anniversary, darling. Check out this link!” And a book because the best books are beguiling and enduring, like memories of our best and dearest old loves.
Here we are reaching out to the ones that got away, and the ones we held onto for years. This is a collection of notes from the world, to the world. And they all begin, “Dear Old Love…”
—Andy Selsberg
Dear Old Love…
HAPPY ENDING
I’m so glad it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to.
ADVICE
Mother told me, “Don’t buy the first coat you try on.” So I broke up with you. But in retrospect, I think she was talking about coats. Sorry.
PELTED
I’m consoled by the fact that the two of you will have very hairy children.
IT’S NOT YOU
Yes, we had good sex. I have good sex with everyone. That’s me.
BLUE RULES
Putting ketchup in a bowl, no drinking from cans because you’ll cut your lip, special slippers for guests. Being at your mom’s house was like those crazy laws from the 1800s that say you can’t walk a duck on a leash in Pennsylvania.
BIG SOLO
When I play air guitar, you’re my air audience.
BOWLED OVER
I can’t believe I miss hearing you yell “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” after bowel movements you were particularly proud of.
U OF YOU
You were the only worthwhile thing I studied in college.
TONIGHT’S SPECIAL
I never tired of looking at you over the tops of menus.
DOPPIO
Since you left, I still make two cups of coffee in the morning. I drink both of them.
FLAKE
I’m dreading the first snowfall, because I’ll have to remember a Sunday, white sheets, and pillow creases on your face.
XMAS
The earrings were nice. But what I really wanted was an orgasm.
HEY BABY
If all I cared about was producing a genetic masterpiece, I would’ve stayed with you.
LAB WORK
You taught me how long I can handle a relationship based solely on sexual chemistry. Seven months.
SHHHH
I would have been happy with our secret love affair forever. We could have secretly moved to California and had secret jobs on a secret vineyard.
LOVE IN THE TIME OF LUNESTA
They set us up because we both have trouble sleeping. That should have been a sign.
PET PEEVED
I don’t care that you miss my dog. When you cheated on me, you cheated on him, too.
GO BALD ALREADY
I hate the idea of you keeping all your hair and me not being able to touch it whenever I want.
CLASS NOTES
You should publish an alumni newsletter for everyone you’ve dated. I’d like to see what my colleagues are up to. We’re a good group.
MISSING MISS
Your maiden name lives on hard in my fantasy world.
MRS. HIM
I still use your last name when I doodle my future signature.
IS THIS YOUR FLOOR?
I smelled your perfume on an elevator and it took me back ten years. An old woman dressed like a teenager was wearing it.
MEGAPIXEL REGRET
I wish we’d invested in a better camera. And used it.
UNSUBSCRIBED
A woman called for you yesterday. I started to tell her off, but she was just selling subscriptions to The Chronicle.
SO CLOSE BUT YET
Why are you my best friend, and not my best husband?
MAGINOT LINING
Remember in tenth grade when I said we should meet at Victoria’s Secret, and you showed up with your friends? I was giving you a visa to the land of adult sexuality, and you tried to smuggle three doofuses across the border.
OVERBLOWN
You blew me all out of proportion.
LUCKY STRIKE
I have to believe our relationship continues to play out in all those particles of cigarette smoke we exhaled together.
REST IN PEACE
I always preferred your pillow. Now that it’s mine I don’t like it so much.
RIBBED
I wish we’d been close enough for you to go on the pill.
TIED UP
Your penchant for neck scarves makes me want to autoerotically asphyxiate myself by way of tribute.
MOMENT OF CLARITIN
I discovered the hard way that I’m allergic to your cat, your laundry detergent, and your deepest beliefs.
PAGING MR. SNOTBORG
I let you go because I couldn’t stand your last name.
IN MY LEAGUE, BR
IEFLY
Your laughter was music. Your eyes were jewels. Even your farts smelled like Shalimar. Thank you for rebounding off me.
IDIOCRACY
I still say you’re an idiot for not falling in love with me.
MEASUREMENT
Even though we broke up five years ago, I still rate the way I feel about someone new on a scale that goes from Zero to You.
CLASSIFIED
I ran that Missed Connection notice looking for you for so long it became a regular feature, like those beret ads in the back of The New Yorker.
TRADING DOWN
You gave the impression that being with me was settling, which I was fine with, but then you didn’t settle.
SHAKE
I could only get so stoned on the stems, seeds, and resin of your affection.
LAMENT
It’s so hard to cyberstalk a technophobe.
BALANCE
I do not miss your drunken rages. I do not miss paying for everything. I absolutely do not miss your insane family, and I do not miss uncovering your many lies. However, I think of you often while masturbating.
TOUGH JOB
Every morning my boss asks if I’m all right. Every morning I lie.
1-2-3-4-5
Please change your e-mail password. I’m addicted.
DRESS CODE
You taught me: If he dresses like a douchebag, he’s probably a douchebag.
ONE NOTE
I stopped talking to everyone who grew tired of hearing me talk about you. So now I don’t really talk to anyone.
TOUCHDOWN
I root for the Giants because of you. My husband has no idea.
IS THIS THING ON?
I realized later on that our blowjob-centric sex belied deep issues about your experiences with intercourse. You were telling me you had problems and I didn’t listen, even though you were speaking right into the mic.
AS GOOD AS I GET
You made me want to be a lesser man.
COME BACK KID
Come back from Tanzania. I want to get a cabin in a ski town and have babies with you.
LOCATION, LOCATION, RELATION
I could live in the same small town my whole life if you were there, too.
REMEMBER HOMEROOM!
You signed my ninth grade yearbook, “We could’ve used a girl like you at the Alamo.” I’ve had a thing for you ever since.
SOUR INVESTMENT
You operated an emotional Ponzi scheme with many, many women, and I was the last to cash out.
NUMBERS GAME
I’m glad you were my fourth.
WUV BITES
You thought the way I pronounced certain words was cute. Now I feel like I have a speech impediment.
BLESS YOU
I’m still searching for someone with a stranger and more endearing sneeze than yours.
MINUS ONE
I’m still in love with you, and you’re in love with every woman except me.
SCOTCHED
I was afraid if you got close, you’d see the Scotch tape holding me together.
UNHAPPY ENDING
Then again, if you hadn’t been a full-service masseuse, we never would have met in the first place.
JUST FOR LUCK
I wish I’d saved a few pairs of your underwear, to seal in a jar and keep on a shelf high in the pantry. Is that the sort of thing that makes you miss me, or glad it’s over?
SCRATCH THAT
If I’d known I was only going to get one shot, I would have left more marks.
E-LOVE BUT NOT IN LOVE
“I love you” doesn’t count if you can only say it in e-mail.
SNOW LEOPARD IS NEXT
When I said you were the only boy I called Puppy, I lied. I’d been calling my boyfriends that since high school. I feel so guilty about it that I’ve switched to Tiger.
SPELLING CUMULUS WITHOUT US
You made all the clouds look sad.
HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND
I held out hope that you’d come rushing into the temple, tear down the chuppah, and declare your love for me right up until the moment I smashed the glass.
EVEN I GET THE BLUES
I kept all your Tom Robbins books.
FORCING IT
Ours was an Obi-Wan relationship. We struck it down, but then it became more powerful than we could possibly imagine.
AT MY MIDDLE
You never saw me at my best. Now I’m worried that maybe there is no such thing.
TELL ME MORE
I love how you always chewed gum when we had sex. It was like doing it with a ’50s carhop.
WAS I WRONG? DEPENDS.
Because your father vowed to do everything in his power to break us up, and he did, I enrolled him in NAMBLA and flooded his mailbox with hairpiece catalogs and coupons for adult diapers.
LOST AND FOUND
I miss flea-marketing with you. You had a way of turning old junk into slightly less junky junk.
BEAUTY SCHOOL DROPOUT
I’m sorry I didn’t trust you to cut my hair.
CAMP SWEETHEART
I know you only gave me a backrub because you happened to be standing behind me when the music stopped, but to me, at fourteen, it felt like fate.
LINKED IN
I held onto the jade cufflinks you gave me for the prom, forty-nine years ago. I just gave them to my son.
BETTER LOVING THROUGH METAPHOR
Dear Old Love,
Our relationship was like…
• my singing voice—way better in my head.
• a jam band. It went on far too long and only made sense on drugs. Fun at the time, though.
• a thriller that you can never read again because you already know the grisly ending.
• a perfect pair of jeans that gets irreversibly cut off at the knees one hot summer day.
• a great song that gets played so often you can no longer hear what made it great.
• the idea for a National Service Corps—way too much personal sacrifice involved.
• an inflatable guest bed—handy to have around, but yielded mostly restless nights.
• single-malt scotch. Now, I could appreciate it.
• a coin-op ride outside the supermarket—underwhelming and vaguely sticky. But still, the world would be sadder without it.
• Times Square—better when it was worse.
• a fireplace video. It crackled, and looked convincing, but provided no actual warmth.
• a Rubik’s Cube. I smashed it on the ground so I wouldn’t waste any more time with it.
• an old episode of Seinfeld. I can’t imagine a late night where I wouldn’t be happy to revisit it for 22 minutes.
• a possible no-hitter. We were obliged not to mention the lack of scoring until it was over.
• a banned insecticide. It worked amazingly well, but probably would have killed us.
• the core of a star—too hot not to cool down.
RUN BACK
If only I’d thought to bottle the way your neck smelled after a jog along the river.
SWITCHEROO
I have replaced you with a body pillow.
SILVER FOX
Couldn’t you just consolidate and work off your credit card debt instead of going to Belize with that old man?
WHY MATTERS
I think you came back because I asked you, not because you wanted to.
MY MISTRESS’ EYES ARE NOTHING LIKE THE SUN
You are assless and have stick-out ribs, but you are tubby, too. You’ve read Proust in French but live in West Texas. You think a lot about clothes but wear pajamas most of the time. Your feet smell awful. All of this I loved.
Dear Old Love Page 1
