Dear Old Love

by Andy Selsberg

  WRAPPED

  My love for you is like a mummy—carefully preserved, with the brains yanked out.

  UNPRECEDENTED

  When we first got together and you asked how many women I’d slept with, I thought you were worried about STDs. Now I’m pretty sure it was my sexual technique that made you ask.

  CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

  I’ve gone through three phones since we last spoke. How many more before I stop transferring your number?

  SOHO SAD

  I was there for those first paintings, and now I don’t get to go to your openings.

  MISSED SOME SPOTS

  Wish I could’ve saved some of your freckles, somehow.

  BEEN BAD

  You turned and said, “Spank me. I give you permission.” But I couldn’t bring myself to hurt you. I sure would like to take you up on it now, though.

  IN THE FOLD

  I still make those paper cranes and dollar bill rings you showed me. For my daughters.

  APPLE OF MINE

  I was more than ready to give you a shot, but I could never be with someone who considers chucking an apple core an unforgivable act of littering.

  HOW’S SPOT?

  When I see you, what I really want to ask about is your vagina. It’d be like asking about a beloved dog. “How’s the vagina? What’s it up to? Any adorable mischief lately? Give it a pat for me!”

  FAIR TRADE

  You broke my heart, but refined my grammar and sense of style.

  DAY OFF

  Could we take a one-day vacation from our lives and spend it wandering around an old amusement park at the edge of summer?

  DOWNTURN

  I should’ve hoarded you for the lean times.

  EYE-TALIAN

  I resent it when people compliment the glasses you got for me in Milan, because it’s like they’re praising you. But I do look great in them.

  HEMLINING

  I regret not being able to see you dressed in all the fashions that have come and gone since we split.

  LET’S HEAR IT FOR HALFWAY

  It’s okay that we never made it to the top.

  MAY DAY

  Five-foot-nothing. Thirty-seven. Red hair past your ass. Five cats. White convertible with overdue payments. Unblended lipliner. Playboy tattoo. Day tripper. You had more red flags than Mother Russia.

  ROCKY ROAD

  I got fat after we broke up, but don’t let that swell your head. It was more because I was working at the ice cream store.

  WILLIAM’S PENN

  When I get a hard-on, it points towards Philadelphia. It thinks you’re still there.

  FIFTEEN MINUTES OF LAME

  You left me for someone who doesn’t know who Andy Warhol is.

  SQUASHED

  We would have stayed together longer if you weren’t such a militant vegan. But I will always remember the summer when I ate only sides. By August I saw you as a talking pork chop.

  ITTIGI LITTIGUV YITTIGOU

  Thank you for teaching me how to say “I love you” in gibberish.

  THE COUPLE THAT HATES TOGETHER

  We had contempt for all the same things and people, and I still can’t believe that that wasn’t enough.

  SHOELESS JILL

  In my book, being the Girl Who Walked Around Campus Barefoot means you’ll always be a celebrity worthy of desire, even if you’ve long since shod yourself.

  OPPOSITE DAYS

  For the record: I hate you = I love you. I said it a lot. I still do. Hate you.

  FINAL TALLY

  You are the only person I ever enjoyed kissing.

  AFTER FONDUE

  It was a miracle that we ended up in a private room at that hostel in Paris. I’m still sad I was too shy to crawl into your bed because you kept talking about your boyfriend back home. Boyfriend? We were 20! In Paris!

  KAME-KAME-HA

  I miss the ninja yells while you tickled me to tears.

  TYPIST

  I hate when people ask me what my “type” is. Because I always end up describing you.

  BOYS MATURE SLOWER

  I needed ten years to catch up with you.

  EXTRA, EXTRA

  My Times subscription is still in your name. Either you never look at your credit card statement, or you want to stay in my life by providing me with a hard copy of the news.

  GRADE A

  You are a gigantic ass. And not the good kind of gigantic ass, like my ass.

  HEY LADYSMITH

  I thought your “sixy” South African accent made up for the extra weight, but try telling that to my friends.

  LATE FEE

  I asked for my DVDs back, but what I really wanted was for you to return all the love I gave you.

  CHICAGO HOPELESS

  I accept the fact that I supported you through medical school. I don’t think it’s wrong of me to expect free health advice and prescriptions on demand for life.

  STYLE POINTS

  I keep trying to get my hair back to exactly the way it was when you loved me.

  MARLBORO FIGHTS

  I thought it was sweet the way you smoked a pack every time we had a big argument.

  CYBER SUMMARY

  Online: you were perfect. Then: disaster.

  I’VE TRIED

  All this would be so much easier if I hated you.

  ALL ABOUT YU

  I studied enough Italian to have conversations with your parents, but you only learned enough Cantonese to count to ten.

  NO-NAME DROPPING

  I still talk about you all the time. You’re my brilliant, nameless “friend.”

  PABLO, HONEY

  I practice Borges and Neruda aloud so I can read them to you in the mother tongue someday.

  PSYCHIATRIC HELP 5¢

  It’s nice you went to therapy after we broke up. I wish you’d gone while we were still together.

  THE NOTHINGTON POST

  Found your secret blog. It’s so boring!

  NOTHING GOLDSCHLäGER CAN STAY

  I was drunker than I’d ever been. You tasted like cinnamon. Is your name really Paco? Because no one believes me.

  HERSUTE

  I hope you didn’t go through those hair-removal procedures for me. I like my women mammals.

  KILLJOY

  How were you against holding hands? That’s like hating springtime, or being anti-kitten.

  THE REAL DEAL

  I’m sorry I accused you of pretending to be gay.

  WINONA AND FRIENDS FOREVER

  I don’t regret getting a tattoo of your name. I just watered it down by adding a bunch of other lovers.

  HAVAIANAS NIGHTS

  Your shoes were terrible; I wish we’d dated during flip-flop season.

  A MORE CIVILIZED AGE

  It both cheers and saddens me to think that glow-in-the-dark condoms plus lightsaber sound effects comprised the high point of our relationship.

  NEAR MISS

  I wish I missed you, so I could do that instead of just feeling empty.

  GO FIGARO

  Thanks to the tragedy of our breakup, I now love opera. But I can’t find anyone who will go with me.

  NO VIBRATIONS

  It kills me that we were too young, shy, and oblivious to use toys.

  FUN SCALE

  Being with you was fun, but fantasizing about you is funner.

  OLD STYLE

  I started collecting vintage erotica because they have bodies and hair like yours.

  WELL, DUH

  I miss that stupid face you made during sex.

  I, SPECTATOR

  I may have exaggerated my devotion to sports to win you, but my love of sitting, eating, and watching things was genuine.

  MULLIGAN

  Can I have a do-over?

  CURSES

  You couldn’t dress up like an elf and pretend I was a wizard that cast a sex spell on you? You are not a dreamer like me.

  TIMING MACHINE

  I wish we’d met when we
were sixteen.

  FRESHEN UP

  Do me this favor. Next time you’re in bed with a girl you’re not serious about, and she says she’ll be right back from the bathroom, don’t whisper, “I’ll miss you.”

  THE REAL ENDING

  Dear Old Love,

  I knew it was over when…

  • the back rubs tapered off to one every three years.

  • you got back into the car with all that beef jerky.

  • you used the recession as an excuse to stop going to the movies.

  • you said the secret to a long marriage was freedom.

  • you got the call about your father. I’m not good with bad times.

  • you started secretly making copies of my recipes.

  • you claimed to have outgrown dirty limericks.

  • you no longer looked me in the eyes on video chat.

  • you quit straining the pulp from my orange juice.

  • I saw his silver Audi in front of your place. Good-bye, and thanks for slumming.

  • you gave up cunnilingus for Lent.

  • your mom yelled at me for not knowing who Rebecca from the Bible was. With the way she was talking I thought this Rebecca was a neighbor of yours.

  • you had a second kid. Through marriage and kid #1, I figured I still had a shot.

  • you stopped being real and started being polite.

  • I started living vicariously through your infidelities.

  • you didn’t pay for my dinner. For the two-hundred-and-fiftieth time.

  • you stopped hoisting me up onto your shoulders at outdoor concerts. And, we stopped going to concerts.

  • you quit wanting to coordinate our Halloween costumes.

  • you wept and said you no longer loved me.

  SLEAZE LIKE US

  Crawl back into the hole you came out of. And take me with you.

  BOOK HIM

  I finally finished my novel. It’s nothing like the early drafts you read. The character based on you kills himself because he’s a jackass and everybody hates him. Especially me.

  LOW FIDELITY

  I put on the mixes you made for me just to hear everyone complain about how terrible they are.

  DARN IT

  You like the club scene. I like to knit. You said that wouldn’t matter. It did.

  INDECENT PROPOSAL

  I didn’t want to say yes. It’s just that it’s very hard to say no when someone whips out a ring on top of Table Mountain and his family is at the bottom waiting to celebrate the “good news.”

  AN AMERICAN CLASSIC

  I liked your roommate better.

  PRETTY COLD, HUH?

  I had so much small talk prepared for when I saw you, but when you appeared, I couldn’t say anything.

  WILD WEST

  When I think about you living alone in that cabin, I ache to bring you coffee, a horse, and a fiddle.

  CAST IRONY

  I left because you threw the frying pan at my head, and now the thing I miss most is your cheesy eggs.

  NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

  Inverted nipple canyons and wild, bumpy areolae, like relief maps of Antarctica and Madagascar. I felt like Vasco da Gama. I hope they’re appreciated now.

  INKING ABOUT YOUR BODY

  I heard you got an ass tattoo, as if there were any other kind.

  SUSPENDED

  I feel like we issued each other irrevocable make-out licenses, good anytime, anywhere. It’s always a sad shock to realize this isn’t the case.

  29

  You were too old to be a pothead.

  INDEPENDENT WOMEN PART 1

  I started listening to Cat Power for you, but screw that—I’m going back to Beyoncé.

  BED RINGERS

  Being an identical twin does not mean I’m interchangeable with my sister.

  I’LL SEND AN SMS TO THE WORLD

  I upgraded to unlimited texts for you. Now what?

  WITHERING

  After you left, all the plants were so distraught they committed suicide.

  KEEP IT LIKE A SECRET

  I think of you whenever I hear our song playing in a store. I especially think of how you hated all of my music, and how I never even told you it was our song.

  SLEEP TIGHT

  You deserved a higher thread count than I could give you.

  OR FOREVER HOLD MY PEACE

  I’m being compassionately curious, not snide, when I ask: Did you fix all that stuff before you got married? How?

  WOOD PANELING

  I prefer bars designed to resemble old basement rec rooms, because they remind me of you and being young and going wild.

  BACK BURNER

  I’m still your plan B, right?

  STUNG

  I can’t believe you’re becoming the type of guy who stays cute. Couldn’t you have followed Robert Redford instead of Paul Newman—more Sundance, less kid?

  ENLIGHTEN UP

  I know you love the Power of Now, but living in the moment does not mean pretending our relationship never happened.

  PERSPECTIVE

  No, it’s not the end of the world. But it’s the end of a lot.

  THE JOSHUA

  I finally opened up that restaurant, and I named a sandwich after you, like you’d always wanted. Greasy hair, bug eyes, bad social skills, and a small penis on rye.

  FLAVOR ENHANCER

  You appear in all my dreams. You make the dirty ones dirtier, and the weird ones so much weirder.

  PICK YOU UP AT ROUTE 7?

  Just because we broke up doesn’t mean we can’t drive from New Jersey to Las Vegas and get impulse-married.

  RUBBERNECKED

  Every time I drove you home, I prayed for traffic.

  MINI GOLF

  I miss things we never even got to do together.

  SHALL NOT PERISH FROM THE EARTH

  That time we made out while sitting on the Abe Lincoln statue? There should be a statue of that.

  GOLDEN YEARS

  I really did want to be a grandparent with you. It’s just that getting to that point would have been an interminable slog.

  THE LINES ARE OPEN

  I hereby rescind the prohibition against calling me during Steelers games.

  MEAL PLAN

  I miss pretending to ignore you in the cafeteria.

  PUZZLING

  How the hell did our bodies fit together like that, yet we’re not together?

  NARROWING

  I’ve ruled out academics, the very religious, Europeans, post-hippies, and now, thanks to you, old friends.

  ON PHOTOGRAPHY

  Why, in picture after picture, do we look happier than I ever remember us being?

  YOU-SHAPED SEATING CHART

  Your underwear is the only thing I remember from eighth-grade Spanish.

  SUFFICIENCY