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By Barbara Raab
I knew it!
Whatever it was, it got me reminiscing about some of the crazy things I've done in the throes of a bad lesbian breakup. Yeah, I got to thinking back... way back... like, oh, roughly, 6 months and 4 days and 2 hours ago, when a woman--in an act of temporary writer's generosity I will resist the urge to tell you her name--decided without consulting me that it was time for us to part (which, in hindsight, should have happened about 5 minutes into our first dinner date). We issued no press release, no public statement, although I suspect that some members of the public below her open living room window were probably able to hear me as I wailed and screamed and demanded to know WHY, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS AND ANYWAY I DON'T LOVE YOU ANYMORE AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF I LIKE YOU!! What they couldn't see was her, just sitting there on the couch looking at me like, "Don't you get it? It's over." I didn't wind up stumbling along some road in Fresno, but here are some of the things I did do:
I placed the following book order from Amazon.com: The Lesbian Love Companion: How to Survive Everything From Heartthrob to Heartbreak; On Intimate Terms: The Psychology of Difference in Lesbian Relationships; Permanent Partners: Building Gay and Lesbian Relationships That Last; The Intimacy Dance: A Guide to Long-Term Success in Gay and Lesbian Relationships; Write from the Heart: Lesbians Healing from Heartache; and Unbroken Ties: Lesbian Ex-Lovers. I paid extra money for instant delivery. I walked by her apartment many zillions of times to see if she was home or not, as if either way would have made a bit of difference. I used every available search engine to look up every possible reference to her most recent girlfiend, and got in touch with her secret high school girlfriend from 30 years ago. I called her answering machine at work to hear her voice when I knew she was not there, and her answering machine at home to hear her voice when I knew she was at work. When she cancelled our vacation--the one she suggested we take--I booked a room in Key West. While she took the vacation we planned by herself, I spent 5 days by myself at a lesbian guest house, the only person there without somebody else. I sent her a bill for for my vacation, and she paid it.
Oh, yeah, and therapy. Lots and lots and lots of therapy. And medicine.
And wine. And television. Thank god for Behind the Music and E! True
Hollywood Story--lifesavers, both.
Hey, I'm not the only one who goes a little over the top when I get tossed aside. I know this because I did a very unscientific survey of other lesbians, asking for true confessions about the craziest things they've done during the worst breakups they've ever had. Some of them displayed symptoms of The Way We Were Syndrome: what's too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget. But others confessed. Like the woman in New York who admits that, in what she now describes as a moment of weakness and extreme stupidity, she had sex with her ex and then with her new lover, all in the same day, after everything blew up and both knew about the other. Not a bad way to lose your mind, if you ask me. A woman in Chicago says she walked around in a stupor for months after her ex left; the only difference between her and Ann Heche, she says, is that Heche got caught doing it. Then there's the woman who broke up with her lover because she suspected she was having an affair with a well-known lesbian performer; a month later, the breaker-upper showed up at the performer's show, threw her arms around her, and said, "We have something in common! You dated my girlfriend!" Kim in Brooklyn sent in a slew of magazine subscription cards with her ex's name and address on them ("Bill Me Later"). Melissa gave an ex-lover four thousand dollars just so she would leave the country (she did). A few years later, Melissa dumped a new girlfriend who happens to be a somewhat famous lesbian writer, and when the writer's next book came out, Melissa discovered the prostitute character's name was-- whaddya know--Melissa. What else? Weird haircuts, tattoos, extra piercings. Joining a gym, signing up for school, taking language classes - all in one week. Smashing the ex's car windows, showing up and making a scene at the ex's workplace (oops, she's "out" now!), or wishing, as one woman did, that the ex who had an affair with one of her co-workers would be seriously injured in a plane or a car crash - "no death," she says, "just a slow and painful recovery." And of course, there's the usual stalker stuff - calling a dear departed ex a hundred times and hanging up (but watch out for *69), or the on-wheels version, the repetitive "drive-by," as Sue in San Francisco puts it. What is the problem? Why couldn't we just get over it? I put that question to two big time lesbian therapists, Betty Berzon (author of the aforementioned Permanent Partners)and Marny Hall (The Lesbian Love Companion). "You can't make her come back, you can't make it not happen," Berzon told me. "It's about trying to keep a connection with that person, even in a meaningless, negative way. It's about not being ready to let go." You've got that right. Hall says a bruiser breakup is almost a rite of passage for lesbians, "where you're close to insane if not insane. It's about the investment, the level of intimacy, and therefore the level of betrayal" that can happen between two women. "You're just crashing and burning and you think everybody else should crash and burn too." As for Anne and Ellen, both Hall and Berzon think they know what went wrong: the glare of the public eye, the pressure to be the perfect lesbian couple, even the ideal breakup couple. "Poor thing, I'd be wandering along in Fresno too," Hall told me. Personally, I am feeling much better now. I haven't written any letters or called any answering machines or indulged in any stalking behaviors in, oh, 2 or 3 months. I've seen her duck me on the street, and I don't care. When I come across something that reminds me of her, I don't even waste my time returning it anymore, I just throw it out. The only thing I can't get myself to toss down the trash chute is the really nice Eddie Bauer ski sweater she gave me for Christmas . I think I will give it to the homeless guy on her new block (which is right near my block - couldn't she pick someplace else to live?). I hope she likes the way it looks on him. Barbara Raab is a writer and television producer in New York City. |
Ellen & Anne during happier days, at the premier of Contact
© 1997-2000 BEI