Ex-Boyfriends

High School boyfriend & I Grad Night 1969

I married him... not once,TWICE!! 

Thanks to a new blog I'm reading, The Alchemist's Pillow, I found the following poem which goes perfectly with my last post, "Notes on a Former Lover".

Ex-Boyfriends

by Kim Addonizio

They hang around, hitting on your friends
or else you never hear from them again.
They call when they're drunk, or finally get sober,

they're passing through town and want dinner,
they take your hand across the table, kiss you
when you come back from the bathroom.

They were your loves, your victims,
your good dogs or bad boys, and they're over
you now. one writes a book in which a woman

who sounds suspiciously like you
is the first to be sadistically dismembered
by a serial killer. They're getting married

and want you to be the first to know,
or they've been fired and need a loan,
their new girlfriend hates you,

they say they don't miss you but show up
in your dreams, calling to you from the shoeboxes
where they're buried in rows in your basement.

Some nights you find one floating into bed with you,
propped on an elbow, giving you a look
of fascination, a look that says I can't believe

I've found you. It's the same way
your current boyfriend gazed at you last night,
before he pulled the plug on the tiny white lights

above the bed, and moved against you in the dark
broken occasionally by the faint restless arcs
of headlights from the freeway's passing trucks,

the big rigs that travel and travel,
hauling their loads between cities, warehouses,
following the familiar routes of their loneliness.

"Ex-Boyfriends" by Kim Addonizio, from What Is This Thing Called Love. © W.W. Norton, 2004

Notes on a Former Lover

Last night I received an email from a guy I dated in my late twenties.  We renewed our friendship last year when  I wrote him after seeing his address in a mass email to members of our media circle about a well liked friend who died prematurely.  This guy was, as Meg Ryan put it in "When Harry Met Sally", my transition guy; the first man I became attached to after my separation and divorce from my husband.  At the time, he was a national radio rep, running the LA office of a prominent national firm.  Basically, these guys represented radio stations throughout the US, calling on LA agencies for the placement of  national business.  I was a national media buyer, working in-house for the largest photo finishing company in the U.S.  I purchased radio & newspaper advertising in 40 out of 80 markets.

His interest became evident when he heard I was separated.  He approached my boss to see if it was appropriate to ask me out.  They had a good relationship;  she liked him and she liked me so she was all for it.  I'd had dinner with him many times on a business level and we got along great.  Dating was about to change the whole picture.  First of all, he invited me to accompany him to Kyoto.  His San Diego station had an annual client trip to which he was always invited with a "guest" and he invited me.  It was a week long excursion.  We'd never even kissed.  I called my mother and asked her what to do.

 "Go."  she said.

But my father got into the act.  He had been a national rep too.  He'd had his own business for thirty plus years before retiring.  He was bat shit.  The phrases "Not proper" and "conflict of interest" were applied liberally.

All my co-workers wanted me to go.  It was the trip of a life time and I was separated and my husband, soon-to-be-ex, was on the east coast.

"Go!" they urged.

I didn't go.  I couldn't reconcile any of it:  the conflict, the feelings I had for my husband and the fear I felt about being with the new guy.  Turns out, I'd have had my own rooms and needn't have worried but I was too inexperienced to ask.  He was very disappointed but when he returned we began to date and years later I realized I might as well have made the trip because, in the eyes of his competitors, I did compromise myself by dating him.  He always claimed I was much harder on him when it came to negotiations than I was on his competition and he was right.  But only he and I knew that.  It was doomed from the beginning but we became very good friends.

So last night he dropped me a note and it was sweet. He was bringing me up to date on his grand kids, his life.  He is still single having married and divorced twice, once before I'd met him and once after.  He ended the email referring to himself as an "elderly gentleman".    He just turned 67 which kinda blows me away as I remember his 40th and 50th birthdays.  We lost touch after that.

As my transition guy, we were better friends than anything else.  He was somewhat of a mentor, usually a good sounding board and very helpful through much of my career.  I was never in love.  I just had a serious crush.

What are the ramifications of looking up an old love?  Are they sweet?  bittersweet?  sad?  Do we only want to see the ones that ended not too badly?   How many of us know where our ex loves are?  How many of us care?  Food for thought.