So with my barfily cute Gandalf in one hand and no chill in the other, off I went on a dating adventure with The Caveman. And to be clear, yes, that was the “Adventure” in his tiny handwritten scroll. Soz if you thought we were about to jump on a plane and do something ACTUALLY adventurous. No, Going Out and Being A Couple in 21st century New York City was a Magellan-level Expedition in and of itself.
Because The Caveman seemed to feel the need to frontload all his grand gestures into our first month of knowing each other, one night, about three weeks after we had started dating, I arrived home to find a FedEx envelope addressed to me. The return address was from Bed Bath & Beyond, and before you think I shopped at BB&B so much that they were sending me personalized mailings, it is important to know that The Caveman was some kind of buyer / merchandise person for BB&B, specifically The Christmas Tree Shop. Which, we all agree is kind of weird, right?
It seemed odd for him to be mailing me something from work, and the only thing I could imagine it being was perhaps some special friends and family discount or something equally innocuous. It was not a deep discount, or even a ream of the 20% off coupons that one day we’ll be surely using as currency in the apocalypse because of the sheer mint of them. No, not quite.
It was — wait for it — keys. To his apartment. Where he lived.
Accompanying the keys was a letter saying he knew it was presumptuous, but he'd like to make it easy for me to be there on Friday nights when he got home and it if was too much, I could just leave them there when I was at his place next, no questions asked.
Lol. WAT.
For the most part, the entirety of my dating career until this point, had been characterized by my forever being on the back foot. Not knowing where I stood, always waiting for someone else to decide what THEY wanted, making myself small and the lowest of maintenance for fear, god forbid, of scaring the other person away or wanting too much. Dating seemed largely like a giant guessing game, wondering if and when the seemingly never ending list of hints and clues and oblique half-commitments would coalesce into something that made sense-ish.
And now, here was someone, quite literally, unequivocally, inviting me into his life.
It was equally exhilarating and terrifying. So much so that I didn’t tell anyone about the keys until a week or so later, for fear someone would have the common sense tell me that while it seemed romantic, it was probably a little psychotic all a bit too much, too soon.
The first time I used the keys, I remember being nervous, like it was one big practical joke or somehow I would manage to find a way to use them incorrectly. But, the first time he came home from work to find me anxiously pacing and staring at the door nonchalantly hanging out, he was thrilled and not spooked. And so we settled into a cute little routine that involved Fridays at his place and out and about in Hoboken, occasional meet-ups in the city, and a word-of-the-day challenge game where we raced each other to see who could use the word naturally in conversation, first. In nerd terms, this is L-O-V-E love ok.
This is not to say that there were not a few orange flags. The first was that he didnot wouldnot eat pizza. That one’s on me, guys. I should have known right then and there. The second was that he was an adult man who was obsessed with Tae Kwon Do and fiercely protected his practice to the point of refusing to divulge information about it. His was an odd reverence / embarrassment surrounding the classes and tbh it felt a little cringey so I quickly stopped asking about it. And, the other was his complete inability to call any of my lady parts by their actual names, or even relatively normal euphemistic names, opting instead for “your pipes.”
So like most definitely maybe I should have hightailed it out of there the first time he said that, the level of arrested development giving so much middle school boy that I didn’t even begin to know how to unpack it. But on a scale from Goody Proctor to Caligula, I was probably hovering around Charlotte York and hadn’t yet come into my own sexual voice or empowerment, so I chalked it up to him being A Dude and, like any good person enjoying an almost entirely stress-free and gratifying relationship, ignored it. Ugh.
Anyway. That spring was a cozy cocoon of oxytocin and goofy ear-to-ear smiling. I went to one of his family member’s Christenings, he came to a post-half marathon brunch with my mom. It was…essentially everything I had been wanting for so long. My Best Friend even went so far as to declare him: The One. And, it sure did feel like it.
Toward the end of April The Caveman left for Asia on a three week business trip. While we were both overly dramatic about the whole thing and being apart for SO LONG, I also knew the time would pass quickly because I had a lot going on in those weeks. Namely, I was sitting for my Comprehensive Exams for my PhD. The Comps were a completely oral two-hour “conversation” with my three committee members, during which they grilled me on various aspects of each of my chosen specialities. Mine were Modernism, Dystopian Studies, and Aesthetic Theory / Fascism. So, you know, fun times had by all. Yes, I passed and was officially granted permission to Start Writing (woof) and threw a little happy hour for myself at Ninth Ward in the East Village. As you do.
The other Big Thing I had going on while The Caveman was exploiting cheap labor in Asia was a 21-mile race in Big Sur. In a fever-dream after The Bartender and I broke up, I wanted to DO SOMETHING, anything healthy that was the antithesis of hangovers and cheese burgers. Call it a palate cleanser. So I forced one of my good friends, who lived in California, to run it with me, my mom signed up for the 10K and off we all went to the gorgeous, hilly, coast. It was epic and difficult, and one of the coolest things I’ve done.
This was my peak fitness era, so one of the things I liked best about The Caveman was his probably unhealthy rigidity discipline when it came to nutrition and fitness. The Bartender and I had been drowning in false promises and cheap wine, directly at odds with the running life I was trying to maintain, so it was a relief when The Caveman showed up with a codified routine. The Caveman, you are shocked to hear (remember that whole I’m-paleo-and-I-hate-myself-and-don’t-want-to-be-happy-so-I-don’t-eat-carbs situation on our first date) was an avid Crossfitter. This was 2013 and this was peak CrossFit times.
Holding true to the stereotype, The Caveman would not stop banging on about the benefits of CrossFit and how much I needed to try it. The idea of it absolutely terrified me. While I had dabbled in yoga and was an accomplished yogger, having completed a marathon and many half marathons by that point, I had no other fitness routine to speak of. But I had just moved into a new neighborhood, and lo and behold there was a CrossFit gym a block away from the apartment I shared with Connecticut. Finally, after he got back from his Asia trip, he wore me down enough that I wore Connecticut down enough to take a two week foundations class with me. I ended the basics class hooked, she ended the class never needing to go into another CrossFit ever again.
And so began the summer that I got into the sickest shape of my life. In addition to CrossFitting and spending weekends at The Caveman’s shore house in Bradley Beach, I was also actively looking for a full-time teaching position. For years I had been adjuncting and working on my PhD coursework, but now that I had passed my Comps and classes were done, I was in the market for something more stable that, you know, offered health insurance. #americaproblems
July 4th weekend I was on a college BFF girls’ trip in Seattle when I found out that I had gotten a gig teaching 7th grade. The money was decent-ish and the commute wasn’t heinous so I took the W. Plus, the school was close to The Caveman’s apartment, so it really felt like the Universe was just lining ‘em up for me. When I called The Caveman to tell him the good news, he was at Yappy Hour (happy hour where you bring your dog / sheer chaos) at the Wonderbar in Asbury Park. It was loud, hard to hear him, he barely-more-than-monosyllabically congratulated me, the call got disconnected, I called back, he said “Oh that’s great” again and fin. It was, in a word, underwhelming. I attributed the sinking feeling in my gut to the bad connection and inopportune timing. Because it certainly wasn’t a confirmation of the emotional distance I had been feeling. CERTAINLY NOT.
The Caveman had been far less communicative, far less cutesy affectionate upon his return from Asia. It took him a day sometimes to respond to a text, and he was less concrete about plans. It was something I had viscerally felt, but did not want to believe or acknowledge. I chalked it up to the honeymoon phase of newly dating endorphins waning, to just settling into Life. It was around this time that I had started complaining to Best Friend that he was being “bad at texting” and “stressed about work,” but we were still plodding along — until one weekend in mid-July, we weren’t.
The plan for the weekend was that I would head down to the shore on Saturday to run a five mile race with my mom, he would meet me down there, and then we’d spend the rest of the weekend at the beach together. Friday I spent the day at the track with my dad and sent The Caveman a picture of the program since one of the horse’s names was his last name. No response, nothing. Saturday morning he replied with something lame. I tried to confirm our plans for later. He was noncommittal. He texted something about not feeling well, he’d let me know his timing soon, blah blah. By the time my mom and I had run the race, walked on the boardwalk, and had lunch, I could stall no longer. I either needed to camp out somewhere to wait for him or hitch a ride back north with my mom so as not to get stranded. Finally I called him and he said he didn’t feel well and wasn’t coming down.
As much as I might try, the gnawing anxiety I felt could not be dismissed. It was odd, unfriendly behavior and not the behavior of someone who had, for months and months, texted “Goodnight Sweetpea” Every. Single. Night. I tried to not be morose and Sunday found me at The Spotted Pig having brunch with Best Friend spilling my anxious guts and deciding what I would say to him to express my disappointment at the almost complete deflation of our seemingly-so-promising relationship.
After our leisurely brunch, tipsy and empowered, the way only brunch with BFFs can do, I decided it was all going to be ok. This was just a blip. Best Friend got into a cab and I was going to walk a little bit before heading home to Greenpoint. As I stood there on an island in the middle of 8th Avenue, deciding my next move, The Text came through.
I’m sorry —
I can’t —
It’s not you —
I’m not in a place —
I wish you the best (haha ok)
Like in a movie, the din of traffic and Sunday brunch crowds buzzing around me faded into silence as I stood there just staring at the phone, only catching snippets. I had known, felt, something was Off, but never in a million years did I expect him to end things with me over a text message. A text message that invited no conversation and had no regard for what I was doing or where I was by means of even a “Hey you got a minute?”
After staring at the phone, I texted Best Friend to tell her I was coming over. While I was in the habit of making far too many excuses for the men I dated, or allowing them way too much grace, I was never EVER in the habit of haggling for love — especially not after being so coldly and disrespectfully dismissed. Five months is not a lifetime, but it certainly deserves more than an “I’m out” text in the middle of the afternoon. Confused and not wanting to be alone, I napped off brunch and shock at her place and got home to my apartment to find that I had locked myself out.
Sitting on my stairs waiting for Connecticut’s Best Friend’s boyfriend to come save me with our extra set of keys, I was numb. Not about the end of the relationship. I had done that before. Knew what to do. How much wine and pizza to consume. How to overschedule myself into distraction. I was numb because The Caveman had ended our relationship with one gerneric text message that said absolutely nothing but, in actuality, said everything it needed to say about what a lame fucking human he turned out to be. It was so final. And (thankfully, even though it didn’t feel like it) I had grown enough to know that I could never ever be with someone like that.
I honestly don’t remember what I texted back. Probably something along the lines of: you are The Absolute Worst Ok…can we talk? I did call him once. He did not pick up. Did not call me back. I sent a penultimate text asking to meet, to talk, for him to return all the stuff I had left at his place and at the shore house (rip so many cute beach things). He declined, stating that it wouldn’t change anything and that he’d send me my stuff. He never did. It took at least a month of nerves jangling as I approached the apartment mailboxes, and countless invocations of variations of “WHAT’S IN THE BOX?”, to accept that it was never coming.
I sent him one last text to tell him what a fucking failure of a human he turned out to be and then I sent him back everything he had ever given to me, Gandalf & scroll, apartment keys included. Now, The Caveman was either such an automaton that he didn’t care, changed the locks, or failed to remember that I was from Staten Island, but girl let me tell you what havoc I could have wreaked in that beige condo.
But my hurt and disappointment eclipsed rage. It was so so anticlimactic and so so lame.
For a long time, The Caveman felt like What Could Have Been. I had had such a clear vision of summers Down the Shore and Irish sweaters and paleo dinner parties. He was attractive and moderately successful. On paper it was IT. The package. The #goals.
But a couple things softened the blow. One, I threw myself into CrossFit and met an amazing community of people that became dear friends. And two, I had grown up enough to realize that I did not want to be with someone who was that cold, could turn off that easily. I learned how to start choosing myself and advocating for myself. And I knew that even though I was heartbroken, that I would eventually find love — and that I would settle for nothing less than a fully-formed human that complemented my life.
Oh, if you’re thinking that’s the next story, that we’ve arrived at the end, lol, no. Not quite.
Ha! Beautifully and hilariously told, as usual. So many “where’s the fuckin box?!?” memories...