we'll call her sally

i have an ex. well, I have several ex’s, but one in particular had a very serious mental and emotional impact on me. (hi, therapy.) we started things up on new years eve about ten years ago. I had met her earlier that previous summer, and she was introduced to me by my two male friends (one straight, one gay) as sally (names have been changed to protect the not so innocent), the bisexual girl who used to be a stripper.. sorry, exotic dancer. I had come out to both of my guy friends, and they were anxious to introduce me to the one and only somewhat gay-ish girl that they both knew. not as a hook-up, but just as a source of support, or maybe more of “ooh look! she likes girls, too!” on a random hot summer night, we drove to her house and I met both her and her boyfriend/fiancé, chuck. chuck was a nice enough guy, and also bisexual, so the two were quite a pair. he was tall, dark hair, dark features, and was showing everyone his new bellybutton piercing. she was short, platinum blonde hair, curvy, and scrambling around her very cluttered parents’ house looking for her purse? keys? lip liner? whatever it was, it was important enough that we waited in the foyer for 15 minutes. I didn’t spend much time with her that night – we ended up driving out to a barnes and noble for me and the gay guy to hang out in the gay section, well.. being gay. as I plowed through one gay book after another, my gay friend abandoned me to sit with sally in the café sipping iced mochas.. talking about, I later found out, me.

fast-forward to thanksgiving break, 1995. sometime before the long weekend, she had emailed me, asking if I was going home for the holiday. she was attending a nearby (2 hour drive away) college, and was looking to see if I wanted to get together and hang out while we were both home. I had been dating someone since I got to school that year, and she was still with chuck, even though they were having a rough time. we spent the few weeks before break emailing about our relationships, school, random things. when we both got home, we ended up hanging out one night, the four of us (me, her, chuck, and gay friend) going dancing at a local club. she started dancing with me, making eyes, raising eyebrows. chuck was oblivious, dancing with himself in a corner. although nothing happened that night, it sparked what eventually happened that winter break… after she and chuck had broken up, but still while I was dating my girlfriend at the time, and she had started hooking up with a girl at her school. sometime after Christmas, we kissed, and on new years eve, we slept together.

after a rough spring semester of our on-campus girlfriends finding out about our new years fling, we steered clear of one another, but eventually reunited that summer when we both came home from school. from then on until the spring of 1999, the relationship was on. we had our fair share of tiny break-ups to larger month-long break-ups, but always ended up coming back to each other. during those years, we fought about everything under the sun. we ended up having a roster of things we “couldn’t talk about” with each other, as every subject became a sensitive subject, and soon enough, we stopped talking about much at all. our more serious spats usually involved fighting about my family, her family, her inability to say “no” to advances from other men and woman, and my jealousy issues that revolved around that. she was a pretty girl, and good for my self esteem. she also looked more straight than most straight girls. she spent our whole relationship declaring her lesbianism and swearing off of men, saying she only liked men before because they were easy to play with, easy to tease, easy to be mean to, easy to torture, and easy to use. she said she could only get emotionally attached with women, and was done boosting her self-esteem by taunting the men-folk with her confidence. funny thing to me was, the fact that for our four years together, she treated me like I was any man she had been with – playing, teasing, torturing, using, being mean to for mean’s sake. putting me down to boost herself up. fighting with me for fighting’s sake.. yelling me into a corner, making every conversation hostile. I was always wrong, and I was always the asshole. she often seemed emotionally unattached, even though I was very much a woman.

by the end, I was tired of everything. I didn’t break up with her because I didn’t love her.. but because I couldn’t deal with the constant misunderstandings, apologizing on my part, tail always between my legs, walking on eggshells, avoiding countless subjects to talk about, and fearing that, although I was in a relationship with her, I wasn’t ever going to be good enough, or have the upper hand, or make any of the rules, or.. well, be right about anything, or feel respected. I was going to be like any other boyfriend she bossed around, used, and discarded. any other boyfriend.. not girlfriend. I had met some of her ex girlfriends, saw her interact with some of them, and even eavesdropped my fair share of conversations. she seemed timid, shy, content on them making the rules, having control, being right. I never saw her stand up to any of them, raise her voice, much less insist that they were wrong in any way… or even complain to me about them in any way. she was indeed emotionally attached to them – stalking them, obsessing over them, begging them to stay with her, not leave her, always love her. sure, maybe it was just different people, different personalities.. but it’s something I could never shake… knowing how she treated me like any boyfriend, and I could never get her to treat me like she would a girlfriend. with respect, with the feeling that she wanted to be with me, that she would ever one day beg *me* not to leave. instead, she broke up with me on a monthly basis, and it was my job to come crawling back, asking for forgiveness, promising to be better.

a few years after we broke up, I had moved on, and so had she.. to marry a man. (that’s a whole other complex in and of itself, and another entry all together.) it seems like the bottom line is, that not only was I the asshole, but I was also the boy, which apparently gave me a whole new set of rules. maybe she was onto something, treating me like any boy she had been with. I spent years trying to figure out why everything was so difficult between us, and why I could never get her to treat me like I wanted, needed her to. after some processing, it’s beginning to make more sense. it doesn’t make me more comfortable identifying myself in the boy category, but it’s another piece to that puzzle.