My Dinner With Michelle...Obama.

So Ken started out this Valentines week writing about breakups and I got super excited to join the fray! Is there anything better then remembering when you were totally right and justified and able to conjure the exact magnificent phrase at the exact magnificent moment?! Well, there's nothing better, but that's because it doesn't happen and when it does, it's because it's fake.

For example:

Once when I was breaking up with this girl, her name was...let's say Michelle Obama, she was all, "You never take me places anymore!"  and I was all, "Really?!"  I mean, we were sitting in the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day when she hit me up.

"What more can I do?!  Here we are having a lovely night and you are complaining?"

"I didn't ask you to bring me here!  Am I some cliché ingenue in some Tom Hanks movie?!  I'm MICHELLE OBAMA, take me somewhere interesting."

She had me there.  It's true, I was on autopilot.  I had been ever since Christmas when she took me to meet her grandmother.  It was fine, she was nice, but I knew it was over. But it was the Holidays and I'm not one to make a fuss.  The truth is, I had forgotten it was Valentine's Day, and all the nice places were booked...or so I assumed, I didn't really have time to check, I just called New York and when there was a table available, I had to take it.  So what if it was sorta hokey? I was trying, which is more then I can say for Michelle.

"Is this why you wore sweats?" I asked.

"What?"

"Is this why you wore sweats...on our Valentine's date?  Are you just done with this?"

"These aren't sweats. I got them from Anthropologie."

This is what she was wearing:

"Those-are-sweats." I stated slowly and with punctuated pauses between each word. "You wear whatever shoes you want, you showed up tonight ready for a light sprint out of here, and now I know why...I don't take you places."

"I don't want to do this here."

"Are you kidding?!  I don't want to do this here?  I don't want to do this until after St. Patrick's Day."

"Of course you don't.  It's all about keeping the peace with you isn't it.  Well, I can see right through you...I saw how you were with my Grandmother!"

"What are you talking about?!!!"

"You were all weird and distant."

"Pull yourself together, Michelle, I was causal and aloof. I didn't want to seem like some nutcase who's all up in your Grandma's business."

"Are you joking right now?  Is that what you're telling me, that you didn't want my 90 year old Grandmother to think you were into her?!"

"I didn't!"

"I'm leaving. Would you hand me my coat."

"No!  You don't get to drop your bombs and walk out!  Oh, No, you get to sit there coatless while I tell you a thing or two!"

"Keep the coat."  Then she shoves her chair out and it sorta bangs into the man sitting behind her. "Oh, excuse me."  She says, but to him and not me.

"Oh yeah," I jump in, "Please don't let her chair tap interrupt your lovely dinner of listening to us scream at each other at the top of our lungs!"

I could tell the guy was embarrassed to be dragged in, but what did I care?

"You are a real jerk sometimes, Patrick, you know that...a real jerk."  Her face was flush with her own embarrassment.

"You know what, Michelle Obama...I don't think this is working out."

"Are you kidding me?"  Her forehead tilled to one side.

"No, I mean it.  I'm not going to drag this on any longer.  We're done."

"You got that right, buddy."  She came straight at me and I lifted my arms up to protect my face, but she only grabbed her coat and walked out.  She didn't look back, and she didn't pay the bill.  When you are dating Michelle Obama, then you get used to a certain lifestyle and there she was, walking out the door.  

The guy whose chair she hit started this slow clap and soon the whole restaurant was clapping. All I could do was fumble through my pockets pretending to search for a wallet I knew was on my dresser.

In the end I walked out moments after she did, only to meet her waiting for the elevator.  It was the longest 102 floors of my life.

  

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

We're coming up on Valentine's Day this week, kids. Love abounds! Except when it doesn't. And you know who you are. And believe me - though I am crazy-insane in love with my wife for decades now, there was a time when I treaded the ground of "Having to Figure Love Out." And that inevitably included break-ups. And man, I hated those.

I used to work with a girl named Tobie.* Tobie had lived in Las Vegas for a number of years, but originally heralds from Planet Drama, where she is considered royalty. (*Names have been changed. Kind of. She spells it without the “e.”) Each morning when I walked into the office, I couldn't wait to see what the Crisis De Jour would be. The dramatic episodes ranged from “Last night I talked to my mom for the first time in three years!” to “I lost 1.5 pounds!” And most memorably, when she broke up with her boyfriend of eight months. Or more accurately, he broke up with her. And what, I ask you, could be more dramatic than that?! (Well, if you’re Tobie, then just about anything.)

So I’m listening to her heartbreaking story, line upon line and precept by precept, when I suddenly begin having flashbacks to my own breakups. I start getting knots in my stomach, I get a little moist under the arms, and I find myself looking for the opportunity to assure Tobie that her and I can still be friends, even though we aren’t the ones breaking up. It’s just instinct.

For me, breakups were the absolute worst. I avoided them like they were cancer. Oh, how they pained me to the core of my dating soul. It’s still hard to talk about some of them…

Tess Dresher. Fourth Grade. I can still recall the day she walked up to me during recess and asked me to “go with her.” “Sure,” I answered. And those were the last words every exchanged between Tess and myself. We occasionally sat by each other, and I gave her a very special Peanuts Valentine’s Day card, but we never did speak, or even make eye contact. So I guess technically we are still “going together.” Boy is she going to be mad when she finds out I got married and had eight children. She’ll want to break up for sure. I’m not looking forward to that conversation.

Julia Zimmerman. High School. It was the summer of 1987, and I was sixteen years old – with a license to drive and to date! I knew Julia really liked me when her mom had grounded her and she promptly ignored said house arrest to go to the movies with me. Yes, we were young and crazy in love! I was pretty sure that after the summer of 1987 I could die happy. By fall of 1987 I was so miserable I was praying for death. We went to different high schools and Julia was first to acknowledge that our long distance relationship wasn’t really going to make it. I nodded my head in agreement, but inside I felt like somebody was cramming my heart through a paper shredder.

College break-ups were the toughest, obviously. You've all been there. Sometimes it's almost cliche. But there was genuine pain, due to genuine feelings and possibilities. It might be too soon. I don't think I can talk about it. Her name was Danielle. It was Halloween night. We had gone to a party and we were sitting in my car in the parking lot of her apartment complex. I was dressed as Aladdin, she was Jasmine. Things had been in the pooper for quite some time, and it felt like a stranger walking by could glance in our direction and know exactly what was happening. It was silent for a few minutes, and then I spoke up. Tell me if you've had this exact conversation before:

“I think we should see other people.”

"Define our relationship,” she said.

“What?”

“Define our relationship!”

“Uhm…we should…see other people…but we can still be -”

“Are you giving me the Friend Speech? Don’t you DARE give me the Friend Speech!”

“Uh…NO…never, never. I think it’s just me.”

“OH, NO – the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ bit?”

“Noooo! That’s not what I mean at all...”

An eternal silence. Like…three days have passed while we’ve sat in the car. And finally she speaks.

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“I…don’t understand the question.”

“I can’t do this!” she yelled, and bailed out of the car.

Joy to the world.

It was truly painful. Of course, not as painful as Tobie’s overly dramatic reaction to the hair she found in her salad at lunch one day. “I almost ate this and diiiiiiieeeeedddddd!”