Dear Old Love

by Andy Selsberg

  SAGINAW

  I regret that in all our years we never got to survive a real Michigan winter together. Coats, snow, body heat, and holding mitten hands all seem to be part of some crucial equation, and we missed it.

  PAVLOV’S ASTHMA

  Thanks to you, inhalers turn me on.

  IRON, MAN

  I don’t break easily, so you must be really strong.

  ALL SET?

  We really can’t just play tennis together? My husband—God bless every other aspect of him—is worthless on the court.

  LOVE ACTUALLY, ACTUALLY

  I enjoyed your chick flicks a lot more than I let on.

  HONEST A

  Your academic integrity prevented our affair, but I still get turned on when I read about deregulation.

  SAINT ME

  I want to save the world, just so you can’t be the one to do it.

  I STILL CARE

  You looked better naked than dressed. While there is something secret-weaponish about that, most people will judge you clothed, so please let me give you a makeover.

  COMFORTABLY NUMB

  How did you sleep all those nights with my arm tucked under you? How did I? I miss those tingling morning hours, the circulation creeping back through my veins.

  DROP ME OFF

  Your messy car felt like home.

  CUSTODY

  You still have my green jacket. You still have much more than my green jacket.

  BUT, ALAS…

  Dear Old Love, I only regret…

  • that we turned back before we got to the Grand Canyon.

  • haranguing you about wearing jeans too often and dresses not often enough. (Still—wear more dresses!)

  • my refusal to accept your leaving with dignity and grace, even if pouting and rage have their own grace.

  • comparing you to all those main characters in Billy Joel songs.

  • balking on our trip to India.

  • having an affair when I didn’t even like the other one all that much.

  • that I made you turn off the lights that last time.

  • portioning out sex like you were a dog in need of treats, even if you were a dog in need of treats.

  • not mercy-killing our marriage sooner.

  • saying “Don’t flatter yourself!” so many times during our breakup.

  • not seeing the look on the next sucker’s face when he finds out.

  • asking you how you got your burn.

  • being too timid to do Ecstasy with you. Now I know—you’re never too old.

  • not enjoying your tantrums while I had the chance.

  • we were not sixty years older when we met. Our age difference would seem negligible, plus you would not be able to get away so easily.

  • turning you on to yoga, and yoga instructors.

  • my last five drunken e-mails.

  • not ceding control of the remote more often.

  • being able to dish it out but not take it.

  • not recognizing how ahead of your time you were.

  • never letting you see me cry.

  HEALING

  I’m still a little disappointed in me, and nature itself, for getting over the loss of you.

  MADE INFORMED

  I’m a better man thanks to your bra-unhooking tutorials.

  MAKE IT NEW

  Old-fashioned love was never our style.

  LET’S RUMBLE

  I know it got old for you, but I could have gone back and forth hurting each other forever.

  HIDDEN ASSETS

  I loved that you always fell for tall, ambitious, confident women. Unfortunately, I am none of those things.

  GENIE

  I keep thinking if I rub this bottle of Maker’s Mark vigorously enough, you’ll appear.

  FORE!

  I wasn’t amused when you pretended to emboss your testicles with the golf ball personalizer I gave you. Fine, I was amused a little.

  BUGGIN’

  I put in your initials when I get a high score on Centipede.

  BEAMED

  Remember at the beach when the moon would always follow us?

  HEADING BACK

  Wonder where your ponytail is swinging now.

  YOU AWAKE?

  I hope you at least appreciate all the pebbles I flicked at your window.

  PARENTS, DINNER, MOVIES, KISS

  I like to think ours was the last proper date in America.

  WAG

  It was puppy love in that we both loved your puppy more than each other.

  PEARLY GATE

  If there is, as I’ve been led to believe, an escalator to heaven, I pray I’ll be ascending it behind you, with your bum right in front of me.

  MILK OF AMNESIA

  I couldn’t make you young again, or make you forget yourself. My breasts were not, as you and your wizened peers seemed to think, a fountain of youth.

  PAIN AS RELIGION

  You believed Jesus walked on water, but you wouldn’t believe my fibromyalgia was real.

  OUT OF ORDER

  I should never have described you as “good-looking for a law student.”

  FOILED

  You looked amazing even in your full fencing gear.

  SEVEN SISTERLY

  Part of me is still waiting for you in the dorm parlor—hair up, clutch in my lap, Lydia practicing the piano in the back.

  I NEEDED MY SPACE

  I only stayed over every night because of the free parking spot.

  PARENT TRAP

  My folks liked you a lot better than I did. They have good taste, but it isn’t mine.

  ABRACADABRA

  How is it you never went down on me in all that time we were together? I see it as a kind of post-modern magic act, like David Blaine suspending himself in a box over the Thames.

  TRèS OBVIOUS

  I only called you pretentious because I wished I was more like you.

  INTO THIN AIR

  Our ideal vacations couldn’t get along, so neither could we. I had my Nepal; you had your Cancún.

  THE MIRACLE OF EVERYTHING

  You know how when you’re young and you first smoke pot, you can’t wait to try everything in that enhanced, giddy state? Movies! Hiking! Shopping! I was like that when I got high on you.

  DEFACED

  That was my head that got cut out of your online dating picture.

  SAME BUT DIFFERENT

  I melted down my wedding band and had the metal remolded to make a nearly identical ring.

  INESCAPE ARTIST

  Even when I dream of you, you break up with me. Even when it goes well and we end up making out, you’ll stop, push me away, and say, “No. This isn’t what I want.”

  THE HOTLINE IS COLD

  The worst part is, I can’t talk to you about what to do about you.

  ROCK & ROLLED

  I’ll be waiting for you after your mild fame evaporates.

  I DO WANT WHAT I HAVEN’T GOT

  Nothing compares 2 sharing a single pair of headphones with U.

  REDRESSING

  I want to compensate all those people you’ve undertipped through the years.

  SET, SPIKE

  Why couldn’t you have taken me as seriously as you took your recreational volleyball league?

  A HUNK OF THE PAST

  If only it were socially acceptable to have a picture of you in a bathing suit on my desk.

  KNOW WHAT I MEAN?

  I miss saying, “You know what I mean?” and having you know what I mean.

  NEW CELL PLAN

  They say every seven years, all our cells are new. There’s some contentment knowing that the me who fell in love with you no longer exists.

  SOCIAL STUDIES

  I’d know a lot more about the Roman aqueducts if your seat, and the perfumed back of your head, hadn’t been right in front of me.

  FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

  “We all miss you” was a cruel thing to say to me, and you k
new it.

  APPETIZED

  I’m still trying to re-create your famous twelve-layer nacho dip.

  SHREW’D

  I shouldn’t have said those things about your mother. Still, I’d say them again.

  ICING

  You may be the last human who still uses the phrase “tonsil hockey.” And yes, dear, you were its Wayne Gretzky.

  LONG HOURS, FEW PERKS

  I just wasn’t up for being your assistant micromanager.

  MOHAWKED

  Declaring things to be punk rock or not punk rock is definitely not punk rock.

  NO DARK SARCASM IN THE KITCHEN

  I would gladly let you home-school my kids (as long as you didn’t teach them any of the dirty stuff about me).

  OUT OF DATE

  I still have your mix tape. But I don’t have anything to play it on.

  PURPOSE-DRIVEN LOVE

  There’s no such thing as a “pointless” affair.

  ADD IT UP

  Songs about moving out. Songs about standing in the rain. The Violent Femmes’ first album, and Tom Waits. I only understood music halfways before you left.

  LOCK

  Please don’t cut your hair. I feel like I own emotional stock in it, and so should have a vote.

  WOOLLY BULLY

  Your hand-knit snowflake sweaters were an implicit promise of hearty masculinity. And you reneged.

  ANIME MINE

  I could have been everything to you. Except a pigtailed Japanese schoolgirl.

  MY UNLUCKY STARS

  You got so famous I had to cancel cable.

  GOD VS. GOD

  Our religious difference wasn’t the problem, but it’s nice to think that it was.

  SHAKEN

  I couldn’t just let you be my favorite bartender, could I?

  HOME FRIED

  You converted me to brunch, and now I’m eating it by myself.

  WHEN HARRY MET TACKY

  I like how we had one of those giant wagon wheels for a table in our apartment.

  NOT BUSY ENOUGH

  I’ve got a lot going on, but it’s still really hard pretending I don’t love you.

  URINETOWN

  You were the first girl to casually pee in front of me.

  OM MY

  It’s hard to meditate because you taught me. You both blazed and blocked my path to peace.

  THOREAU JOB

  You humored my go-live-in-the-wilderness fantasies more than anyone, including me.

  MARY, MARY

  I like to think I’m the reason your parents sent you off to an all-girls Catholic school.

  COUNTERPOINT

  If he had been you, I would have straddled him on the counter and made quick, sweaty work of things. Since he was him, I kissed him twice and headed home.

  QUAD PHONICS

  If only my old dorm room walls could talk. They’d say, “What are you waiting for? Quit talking about free will and have sex already!”

  DEVOUR

  We were way too hungry for each other to get married.

  ASSUMING I SURVIVE THE INITIAL BLAST

  If disaster strikes, I still plan on coming to save you.

  NO THERAPY IS MY THERAPY

  I treasure the neuroses you bequeathed me. They’re all I have left.

  HAVE SOME PASSIONS

  It was too hard to buy gifts for someone who wasn’t addicted to anything. Booze, baseball, old movies—anything!

  MY LIFT TICKET

  I’ve taken up downhill to serve the memory of your ski-jump nose.

  ORDER UP

  They say a good test for how a man treats humanity is to watch how he is with waitresses. I guess that means you have sex with humanity between courses.

  PATENT EXPIRED

  Is “I might be too drunk to drive, so can I stay the night?” still your signature move?

  STUD POKER

  I even miss your gambling addiction, how to you losing big was just as fun as winning big.

  LIKE A SURGEON

  You were brilliant at breaking up—decisive and compassionate, giving me a little hope, but not too much. I’m grateful.

  REVIEWING MY BOOKS

  I could’ve been more generous— bed-wise, if not financially.

  REPURPOSING

  I wish I had a piece of the purple carpet that was in your bedroom when we were together. I’d make it into a scratching post.

  KIND OF BLUE

  Like how one righteous person can save a city, your affection for Miles Davis, and the fact that he was a soundtrack for our first night together, keeps me from writing off all jazz.

  FADE

  For months you were all I thought about, and now I can’t remember your name.

  VISCERAL

  I would skin a donkey for ten more minutes of your unwavering affection.

  OCTOBER 21

  I hate that I can’t forget your birthday.

  THAT’S RICH

  The truly wealthy don’t go bragging about it. It’s why I never talked you up.

  DISTANT EARLY WARNING

  Dear Old Love, As if I’d never noticed…

  • how quickly you cleaned up afterward.

  • that the “Tax Info” tab on your computer was a link to a premium Australian nudie site.

  • the way you kissed your male friends good-bye.

  • how you only looked at you when we did it in front of the mirror.

  • you only called me back on Fridays, at 4 p.m.

  • your secret closet of hair-growth formulas.

  • your secret closet of hair-removal formulas.

  • what you were doing under the covers.

  • that you always took the bigger slice.

  • the solar system tattoo was a cover-up.

  • the slight hesitation. Every time.

  • how even my cockatiel was wary around you.

  • little slices of condom wrapper on your floor, a decreasing volume of Astroglide, and an increase in your tendency to call me “Tim.”

  • all the men in your family have women’s butts. I had to get out before the hammer came down.

  • that you often erased your call history.

  • that we both have hands that look way older than they should.

  • you wanted a diamond and not my Grandma’s old-ass ruby.

  • your forced joviality around kids.

  • that despite your supposed love of wine, you couldn’t even tell if a bottle was corked.

  • how much work you put into your “regular guy” jeans.

  • the amounts you dropped into beggars’ cups.

  • that you were incapable of a full-body smile.

  BEHIND DREAMS

  You said, “I dreamt we had anal sex.” I said, “That’s interesting.” Let me know if, all these years later, that dream recurs…

  I HOPE IT DOES WORK!

  That time I said I hoped it didn’t work out with your new guy? I didn’t mean it.

  MISO LOST

  I’m afraid to order sushi without you.

  NO AIR KISSES, EITHER

  Please tell your new wife she really shouldn’t hug me when she sees me on the street.