We dated 25 years ago. Brian was 28, divorced, Jewish and an attorney. I was 19 and I had just finished my freshman year at college. At that time, most mothers would have raised an eyebrow about the age difference between us. However, my mother, lamenting her own cash-poor, failed marriage, and who raised us saying, "you can marry the rich ones just as easily as the poor ones" heard "Jewish" and "attorney" and prayed that I would live a better life than she did. The fact that Brian was divorced didn't bother her either. "That just means he's already gotten the bad marriage out of the way," she noted.
I liked Brian and I liked having an older boyfriend. We went to dinner parties, ate at nice restaurants, read books and went to museum exhibits. He was smart, successful and quirky. And, if I remember correctly, we had been dating for about 6 months when Brian bought a condo, which I helped him scrub clean and then I never heard from him again. I asked one of Brian's friends what happened and he told me that Brian wanted to marry an attorney so he was hanging out at the local university law libraries. I was devastated. I didn't eat for 2 weeks and worked out every day. (My mother told me I looked great and whatever diet I was on, was working.) This was my first official dumping and it happened the day after I cleaned his toilet.
I wasn't surprised when I received an email from Brian a few months ago. Since the internet has made it so easy to find people, I occasionally receive emails from men from my past who are recently divorced or are going through a mid-life crisis. Brian lives in St. Louis, is divorced a second time, has two adorable kids and hasn't been on a date in more than a year. I pulled up his page on Facebook. He only had one photo posted, wearing sunglasses and a hat, but he still looked cute.
"I remember the first time I saw you," he wrote me, "looking very conservative, sitting in the afternoon sun, your legs crossed, your head tilted to one side to avoid the sun. Then, the next time I saw you was at a Mexican restaurant at 2 in the morning and you had on leopard high heels and a short black skirt." I remembered that night. My childhood friend, Diane Dazey, and I had gone to a Rod Stewart concert and stopped on the way home to get food. "So why did you stop calling?" I asked him. "I don't really remember," he said. "Maybe it was because I knew you wanted to leave St. Louis and I knew I would stay, and I really wanted to start a family". He hadn't remembered dumping me, yet he had a really romantic view of our failed relationship. "You were the gold standard for every other girl I met," he said. "You were supportive and really easy to talk to. I didn't have to explain things to you, and you had a great sense of humor. I compared every girl I ever dated to you." And he dumped me because...?
I'm glad Brian remembered me the way he did because I was an internal mess at 19. I grew up in a very sarcastic family, with a disconnected mother and an unsupportive father. "Too bad our dads didn't raise us like Gwyneth Paltrow's did," said a mutually dysfunctional friend. I was incredibly shy (anyone who knows me now doesn't believe me, but I was) and I had low self-esteem, which I hid well by keeping my mouth shut in public. Born with frizzy, red hair in humid St. Louis during the mid-60s wasn't a confidence booster either. But at 19, I was finally coming into my own. My hair was longer, my job afforded me some decent clothes and I'd finally lost my virginity. Oh, and he was right, I couldn't wait to get out of St. Louis. I had wanted to move to New York since I was 5.
How did I remember Brian? He was a germaphobe. When we went to the movies, he would place a paper towel on the seat. He would never touch anything in a public restroom, and would use the towel he dried his hands with, to open the door, and then throw the towel on the floor, not having to touch anything. He got angry with me once for getting a speck of chocolate from my Snicker's bar on the upholstery of his new Honda Accord. Each time we slept together, he took a shower right after. These were the thoughts dancing in my head as Brian
told me how he had been thinking about me for the past 25 years. Admittedly, my memories were a lot less rosy since I was the dumpee, and I hadn't thought about Brian in a long time. But 25 years later, we were laughing on the phone and realized we had many similar tastes. I talked with Brian for hours for three weeks before we settled on a date for him to come.
I was looking forward to his visit to Los Angeles. When I first saw him standing curbside at LAX, I noticed he was shorter than I remembered. He was wearing plaid Converse sneakers, True Religion jeans, a striped scarf, and a black corduroy jacket with something black embroidered on the back of it. At 53, he was quite metrosexual and trendy, even for L.A. After checking in at his hotel, we got a bite to eat and a cocktail. Later, we had more cocktails with my good friend Julie, and eventually ended up at her house with her husband and son. They loved Brian. He's successful, creative, smart and nice. If they had their wish, Brian would have proposed to me over the weekend. We went to the beach, drove to Montecito and Santa Barbara, ate out quite a bit and just talked, watched movies and hung out. Brian was very easy to get along with and actually, quite passive. 25 years had gone by, but it seemed like yesterday. Brian returned to St. Louis that Monday and we've been talking, emailing and texting ever since. After Christmas, he sent me one of his paintings, which I really like and hung above my dresser. I suspect we will see each other again. Until then...
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