The Job of An Ex-Boyfriend

Tonight on the phone Ex-Keith informs me that he doesn't want to sleep with me anymore.

"Uhm, that's wrong," I tell him. "You absolutely still want to sleep with me."

"No," he says—so casual! so nonchalant!—"I don't really think I do."

Ex-Keith is a moron. It's not that I want him to sit around all day and think about what it would be like to sleep with me again, but I do want him to man up and admit that if he got the chance** and if he wouldn't hurt anyone in the process, he so totally would.

This is a dangerous game to play with an ex-boyfriend, and I'm the girl who plays it willingly. It's one of my Big Neuroses. I want my ex-boyfriends, even after we are no longer together, to have moments—not every day, not every week, but every once in awhile—where they sigh, look off in the distance and think, Jess. Gosh, what a great girl.

I think Ex-Keith owes me at least that. After all, on one May night he drove one of his co-workers home. She was drunk. They were both a little drunk. And they sat in his truck and kissed and kissed and kissed. The next day I came over to his house and he sat me down on the loveseat and told me that we weren't going to be together anymore. There was another girl and her name was Shelley.

I didn't get out of bed for a long time.

So, frankly, Ex-Keith owes me for that. He also owes me for the three years that followed. He owes me for my sophomore year of college because I spent the whole thing crying over him and lusting after completely inappropriate men who would save me—men who had strange piercings and thought they were poets (they were not). He owes me for the two years after that—my junior and senior years—because even though we were together again, he refused to call me his girlfriend because he felt it was too "stifling." When I got accepted to Minnesota and went out there to find an apartment, that's when he suddenly came around. "I support you," he said. "I support you 100%. And I'm ready to be your boyfriend now." I wanted to put my fist through his face.

So, I think the least Ex-Keith could do is admit that he would still sleep with me.

"Excuse me," I tell him tonight, "but that's just false. I mean, explain yourself. Am I not pretty anymore or something?"

"I didn't say that," he says. "I'm just not interested anymore."

This rankles me. After all, I've been doing some nice thinking about him lately. For instance, last Saturday Amy and Becky and I went to a ridiculously tiny, very intimate acoustic concert where the lead singer of Lowest of the Low stood on the stage of St. Francis High School and sang some of the best songs ever written. Songs that make me think about Keith.

He was my gateway to Lowest of the Low, after all. It was at his sister's house that I first heard them play. It was in his truck that we used to blare their CDs after we rolled down the windows and let the crisp summer air inside. We listened to them poolside. We listened to them while we parked on deserted streets in the town of Hamburg. He would sing me my favorite lyrics in his off-kilter, out-of-tune voice. He would sing, Just remember when your resistance is low that I know who's your favorite poet... and then he would yell the name of some poet I'd been talking about lately.

Those were nice days, and I sometimes miss them an awful lot. Things were just so simple back then. Keith was my boy and he loved me and I was his best girl. He was my best boy. We drove around and sang songs and grilled corn and steaks. We played Asshole and locked his neighbor in the pantry. We looked up at stars. We were always looking up at the stars.

I feel like he should remember that as fondly as I do. And I feel like he should pine for me in some dark forgotten corner of his heart. Does that make sense? I don't want to be with him, but I want him to want—sometimes, only sometimes—to wonder if he made the biggest mistake of his life. And, I suppose, I want him to tell me that he did.

I try another tactic with him. "You know," I say, "I was good back then, but I'm way better now. I've got new moves."

Ex-Keith laughs. "I'm sure you do," he says. "I just don't want to see them."

"You're giving me a complex," I say.

But suddenly there's this: "I want Abe Lincoln back," Keith says.

"Keith!" I say. "Is this all about ABE LINCOLN?"

"Give me Able Lincoln and then I'll tell you the truth about things," Keith says.

Here's the thing about Abe: while I was in Minnesota, Amy and Becky staged a magnificent coup at a pre-Bills game tailgate party. They found Keith's party, found him drunk and peeing, and they stole Abe Lincoln—which Keith had, in a magical stroke of fate, brought with him to the game for photographic evidence he was planning on taking and leaving in Amy and Becky's mailbox to illustrate Abe's grand adventures since he had been in Keith's control. Basically, Amy and Becky showed him up. In a big way.

"This is all about ABE?" I ask. "You're just trying to piss me off so I give you back a bust of Abe Lincoln that wasn't yours to begin with?"

"Bring me Abe," he says.

"HE IS NOT YOURS," I say. "YOU WILL NEVER HAVE HIM BACK."

"Fine. By the way, I would never sleep with you again," Keith says.

"This isn't your job, you know," I tell him. "You're an ex-boyfriend. You're still my friend. You're supposed to be supportive. You're supposed to say things like You're real sweet, Jess. You're pretty great. You'll get a good man soon. Someone who will love you right. Someone who will be better to you than I was. You're supposed to say those things, not give me new complexes, Keith."

"That's not my job," Keith informs me.

"Then what is your job?" I ask.

He pauses. He lets the silence foam into a thick lather. Then he sighs, suddenly content. "To make your life a living hell," he says. "Okay, I'm going to eat dinner now. Bye."

"You want me," I say. "Goodbye."

~~~
** And he won't, Amy and Becky. So you can stop shrieking You want him! now.