Breakup Déjà Vu
Running into my ex was bad enough — seeing who she was with was even worse
Bullfighting is one of the last refuges of ceremonial macho savagery. Some say the same applies to the dating scene. As Hemingway wrote: “Never confuse movement with action.”
Meet that Someone Special, and start to pace the ring of bar, coffee house or workplace. Get into their pants and into their lives, and the next thing you know, the two mounted picadors (ravenously jelly close friends) and three capemen on foot known as banderilleros (evil relatives) start to sting with lances and barbed sticks.
Who’s matador, you wonder, who’s bull? Who rescues the drooling unconscious best friend, who slips her a dirty martini and bump of K.? Who does conscientious charity work, who cuts the line masquerading as a Human Rights Commission rep? Who goes grocery shopping at Whole Foods, who gets busted shoplifting the $3200 Gucci garter?
Either way, stung and stuck, you might eventually conclude the whole mating ceremony savage, all machismo giving way to the overriding feeling of being steeped in a stadium full of bullshit posturing — red cape and luggage swinging, insane crowds cheering, beasts charging (your Mastercard), no choice but to finally Let It Bleed like that Mr. Jagger suggested.
“What? Your dumping me?!”
“I just feel that we should be moving on, romance-wise.”
“Crank call! Crank call!”
Sooner or later, you get Over It, oh, sometime short of going under — though way past the time you went down. Then, of course, veering off to the side, you start over again, if for no other reason than the raw spectacle of it all.
Ever wonder why at Japanese baseball games they peddle fried whole lizards? Did you know that the regional volume of n-dimensional Hamiltonian phase space must remain constant? No? Well, I haven’t either — Who, me bored?
Never.
I haven’t time for a lover, that’s all…
Living and loving might be a constant cycle of building up and tearing down, but after all is said and done, loved and lived, romantic remnants of successes and failures roam one’s neighborhood like the spectres of conquistadors in forgotten Mayan temples.
“Love,” the airborne author of The Little Prince wrote, “does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.”
In other words, after you break up, count on sooner or later running into each other in front of the Starbucks. Is that her or him, she or he, or someone somewhere in between?
Recognition confirmed, the contest begins: Acknowledge and deal with the consequences — or ignore and deal with the consequences?
Too late. Contact is already established. You can’t run, you can’t even hide. Who should walk, who should talk? Who should turn, who should burn?
Fans seated at a row of tacky green plastic lawn furniture at the front of the coffee shop cheer. Had these frappucino guzzlers roses or bricks, you just know they’d be thrown.
¡Toro!
Hold on, bleeding hearts — this time around, things are different. Which ex is this? A wild-eyed stare cutting sharper than a sword between the shoulderblades for you, sweetie, vengeance is best served — wait! — who the hell is that?
She’s got a new “friend” — and they’re not looking together in the same direction, but actually gazing at each other.
¡Olé!
Eyes wide shut, I can’t help but peek-a-boo:
Stalwart Andalusian nose, bushy Catalonian eyebrows, immaculately chiseled Valencian cheekbones, pecs like the Guns Of Navarone, a smile that could make it to Majorca, and a chin like Gibraltar.
Yes folks, the ultimate Iberian composite, none other than — Antonio Fucking Banderas?
Get outta here.
¡Vamos!
