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.
