I suppose I was expecting a medal or something. You know – for going above and beyond the call of duty, or something like that. But apparently, I never got the memo, and it never dawned on me that they don’t give out medals for anything to idiot boyfriends who stay with temperamental, abusive girlfriends way longer than any sane person would. And if only that were true, and I had gone ahead and broken up with her just about the time she was cutting up my clothes with the mad abandon of a crazy preschooler introduced to her first pair of scissors, except those scissors weren’t the kind with rounded tips. Maybe then, I’d have deserved something, or rather at least preserved something. Instead, what I deserved wasn’t a medal, but a great big kick in the ass.
I’ve come to realize that no one really appreciates all the shit you go through for someone else. Occasionally, the person putting you through the ringer will come to her senses, and be like, oh yeah, thanks for putting up with all my crap. But that’ll be it. There’s no applause at the end of the act. No one’s waiting to sign your autograph. And you can forget about the parade. Like I said, there is no medal. But, you can be sure as hell, there’s going to be a request for an encore.
I’ve also learned that when other people hear your story, there really isn’t any sympathy, especially not from your friends, not while you’re still with her at least. I mean you get sympathy for the truly horrible things – you know – the stuff you see all the time in Korean dramas. My girlfriend’s got cancer and she’s going to die in a year, but I’m going to marry her anyways… Or, my girlfriend was in a horrible accident and is now paralyzed from the waist down… Or even, my girlfriend’s parents hate me and while she loves me, it’s killing her to be with me. If I had any of those stories, then I’m sure I’d elicit at least a bit of sympathy – a “Man, that sucks, dude,” or “Wow, that’s really a major downer,” or at least, “A bit inconvenient isn’t it?” But when your problems aren’t really external to your girlfriend and yourself, but rather quite exactly because of your girlfriend and yourself, you really don’t get quite the level of sympathy that you’d like.
It’s more like, “Why don’t you break up with the bitch?” which at the time you feel is quite naturally explained by, “Because I love her,” but sounds like the most retarded excuse once the relationship passes on into the past tense. Love? What is love? And how the hell does love even begin to explain the level of crap you take from your girlfriend? I used to think that in some perverse way, that how much I loved someone was directly proportional to the amount of crap I was willing to take from her. But that’s a crock. If you don’t know that already, then figure it out yourself. I’m not going to tell you why I’m right, and you’re wrong, even though I love being right and proving it.
In the end though, going through everything I went through doesn’t make me a saint. It doesn’t even make me the greatest boyfriend, lover, or whatever, that ever lived, even if I had gone through the craziest shit that any boyfriend or lover or husband or whatever had ever gone through, which I hadn’t. (I’m sure, at the very least, the dude who had his wiener whacked with a knife while he was sleeping’s got me beat more than half way to the moon.) All it made me was just another guy who had stuck it out a little too long and should have heard the fire alarm and seen the exit sign fifteen minutes earlier, before the smoke and fumes had made him pass out and he was now suffering from third degree burns over ninety-percent of his body. You can see how hard it is to feel sympathetic for some retard who ignores good advice, does his own thing, and pretty much gets what he deserves. Fine, I get it. Life’s fair. Only it isn’t. So whatever. Keep your sermons to yourself.
So maybe I didn’t get that medal that said I was someone noble, special, loving and wonderful. But when it was all over, I did get a whole big bag of cynicism -- a near endless, lifetime supply, which I’ve gladly doled out in huge doses whenever it seemed like people I knew were getting to be too happy.
And I was in a similar cynical mood one evening while out with James and Chi. James was still single, and Chi was in between things at the moment, having recently been semi-kicked out of his own condo by his many years live-in girlfriend, but harboring some hope that they would patch things up for the fifth or sixth time. I've gotten back together with an ex-girlfriend, meaning broken up and then tried again to make it work, just once. And that one time it was because I belatedly realized that I had allowed my pride to get in the way of the fact that I really did love the girl -- well, I loved her enough to want to try at least one more time. But Chi was persistent, I'll give him that. He would fuck up and then beg and plead and eventually Kristin'd take him back. Or he'd go through one of his moods where he just felt like she was too much of a drag, and he'd break up with her. But those breakups would usually only last until the point where she was actually getting ready to move out, at which point he'd realize that he was deathly afraid of being alone, even for one day -- and then he'd break down and again beg and plead for Kristin to take him back.
Now when I say Chi hated being alone, I don't mean to say he was one of those clingy types who always want or need to be with their girlfriends 24/7, to know where they are, what they're doing, who they're with -- all out of insecurity. No, it was quite the opposite in fact. Chi never called Kristin when he was out with us, and he rarely, rarely brought her out, even in the off-years when I actually had a girlfriend of my own. If I saw Kristin once or twice a year it wasn't an oddity. He seemed to relish the time he had away from her, rarely bringing her up in conversation, rarely confessing anything about their relationship, and otherwise pretending to be single when out with us. I think Chi was afraid of an empty house or an empty bed, but as long as he knew that Kristin was there waiting for him, he was perfectly happy to keep her there waiting. I'm sure it sounds a lot worse than it really was, because I can't confess to know what Chi did for Kristin when they were together -- maybe it was all rose petals strewn across the bedroom floor, satin sheets, caramel dipped chocolate and R. Kelly.
In any case, tonight Chi was singlish. I asked him about Lisa and he shrugged and said he'd wait until he figured shit out with Kristin. Chi had called James to come out as well, which had surprised me, since I had assumed that Chi wanted to try flexing his newfound semi-singlehood and get as many phone numbers as possible. Me? I usually just tagged along for the ride, providing ocassional wingman support as necessary. "So why Jimmy?" I thought, since we had come to the conclusion long ago that bringing James along when the goal was to meet women was like draping yourself in a fur coat and going to a PETA rally.
Don't get me wrong -- I love Jimmy. He was fun and funny, laid back, self-effacing in his humor, sarcastic in modest portions, extraordinarily reliable and the most loyal friend a guy could want. This was around us, his friends. Around women, he became something entirely else, undergoing a transformation that could shock and awe me each and every time. Everyone knows the whole wingman/wing commander metaphor for hitting on women in a random dating scene, so I'll just use it now to illustrate my point. So on differing nights, one person in our little group would be designated the "wing commander," whose job was to determine our objective which meant finding the most likely target and identifying all the bogies (that is the female friends surrounding the target). As wingmen, his friends had the duty to follow him into the fray and engage the bogies long enough for the wing commander to deliver his payload. Sometimes when the mission seemed especially difficult and treacherous, a wingman was expected to sacrifice himself by using a kamikaze technique whereby he would swoop in towards the target and build up the chances for the wing commander to come in for the kill.
In our minds, following the gameplan increased the probability of success. With Jimmy along as one of the wingmen though, success was not even an option -- mere survival became the goal. Suppose there are three women at a club. Three on three makes for nice odds. A three man squadron can handle three, maybe even four of five, which makes a three man squadron a nearly ideal number. Four can become unwieldy and two makes for bad odds often times. Jimmy was the drunk, undisciplined, maybe even clueless wingman. When the wing commander would signal that it was time to make the run, he would either ignore the signal or be no where to be found. Our three man squadron would suddenly be one man short when we'd start the mission. I would look around and Jimmy'd be no where to be found. "We lost a man!" I'd scream into the radio and Chi would be equally bewildered. "He was there just a second ago!" he'd scream back. Oh well. We'll just finish the mission without him, we'd think to ourselves. Even against bad odds like two on three or two on four or five (both of the latter surprisingly being easier than two on three), we'd attempt to continue the mission since we had already started. Sometimes we'd crash and burn immediately, having either insufficient firepower,or underestimating the odds stacked against us, or just due to our own poor piloting skills. But occasionally, we'd get a lucky even against fierce odds, a quick hit and we're through and we can sense that the defenses are about to be broken down and mission objectives will be achieved... That's when Jimmy'll rejoin the squadron, drunk off his ass, which would be fine if he would then engage one of the bogeys trying to disrupt the mission, but instead Chi and I would soon find ourselves under friendly fire.
"I'm hit!! Where the fuck did that come from?!?!" Chi would yell.
"Bail out! Bail out! There's another bogey from the rear! I don't know where the fire's coming from!" I yelled back, desperately looking for its source. Jimmy would rain down heavy fire, overkill, shooting indiscriminately, hitting us with broadsides, or worse try to go after the main target himself, thereby forcing Chi to break off his attempt. But Jimmy is that irrepressible, oblivious drunk who could neither comprehend the mission nor stop himself from unwittingly sabotaging us. Having successfully forced Chi and myself to disengage from the target and the bogeys, now regrouped, reorganized, reloaded and arrayed in a defensive formation, Jimmy would then hit the self-destruct button himself, thereby ensuring that all parties would witness his self-immolation.
So after a couple of totally botched nights out, Chi and I had decided that Jimmy was a liability we really couldn't overcome were we intent on meeting women in the cyclical quest to end our singlehood (or in his case, temporary singlehood). It was either leave Jimmy out on those nights, or identify a solo target for him early on in the evening that he could attempt on his own. But even when we chose the latter route, we were then working under time pressure since we knew it was only a matter of time before Jimmy would again hit the self-destruct button, wander over to the bar and get hammered, and then find us and totally blow our mission as well.
And thus we went to a Korean bar/restaurant where our only goal was to eat well, drink copious amounts of soju, and ponder the meaning of life, which evidently becomes an easier task in the very wee hours of the morning. I would usually end the discussion by concluding that it was all shit, meaningless and worthless. I never said abject cynicism as a life philosophy is particularly attractive, or useful, or redeeming in even that slightest of ways in which glaring bright light forces one to examine all the flaws, imperfections and scars and wonder at our own tightly held vanities. But it does provide all the necessary parts for a nice shield of bitterness with which one can guard one's heart. If that's what you're looking for.
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