Confessions Of An Ex-Girlfriend. Lynda Curnyn

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СКАЧАТЬ turned into a permanent position when Carolyn Jamison, the senior features editor I work for, took a personal interest in keeping me on. How could I resist all her encouragement when, up till then, the master’s degree in Creative Writing I had gotten at NYU had resulted only in a handful of unpublished stories and a full-time waitressing position?

      Now, as I sat filled with self-loathing in an editorial meeting on the Wednesday morning of Derrick’s departure, counting the minutes until his plane left the ground and carried him away from me, I began to wish I hadn’t resisted the impulse to call him at 3:00 a.m. to let him know what a heartless bastard he was.

      Looking up from my cloud of despair, I saw Patricia Landers, Bridal Best’s editor-in-chief, stand up to give us her weekly address. “At Bridal Best our editorial mission is to speak to the bride in every woman,” Patricia began, “whether she is simply dreaming of that special day, or taking the first steps toward making that day happen.”

      Step 1: Don’t let your boyfriend leave the state.

      I sighed, suddenly weary of the wedding planning mantra that was sure to issue forth from Patricia’s thin lips. As I studied her wispy blond hair, pale face and crisp blue eyes, I wondered if this would be my fate. To be the ultrathin, somewhat prim yet rather well-kept editor-in-chief of a national magazine. A career woman who needed no man, only a fat paycheck and enough take-home assignments to make her forget that there was so much more to life than work.

      Then I remembered something else.

      Unlike me, Patricia was married. And as dubious as that marriage was rumored to be, it set her miles apart from a manless and struggling contributing editor like myself.

      My eyes moved frantically about the table, where the illustrious editorial team of Bridal Best sat, seemingly transfixed by Patricia’s words. There was Rebecca, the only office colleague I deigned to call a friend and who shared my enthusiasm for taking pott shots at the powers-that-be. But Rebecca had a boyfriend—worse, an incredibly perfect boyfriend, who not only had a high-paying accountant job but came from money. Big money. Then there was my boss, Caroline, of course, who was round with her fourth child, compliments of the hardworking husband she kept back at her sprawling Connecticut home. The other three senior features editors were married, too. Sandra, whose wedding to Roger two years earlier had been almost as splashy as Patricia’s; Debbie, pushing fifty and married for so many years no one even remembered what her husband looked like; Carmen, who not only had a husband but—according to our production assistant and resident office gossip Marcy Keller—a boyfriend on the side. Janice in production was married two times over, despite the hairy mole on the side of her face. Who was left among us single folk but the editorial assistants, who were too young to care?

      I glanced down at the end of the table and swallowed hard as I caught sight of the strange trio who sat clustered there: Lucretia Wenner, the angry copy chief who neither woman nor man could truly love; Nancy Hamlin, the bodily pierced and butch admin everyone suspected was a dyke; and Marcy Keller, who spent so much time studying everyone else’s personal life she barely had one of her own. I quickly closed my eyes, shutting out the hopeless look in their eyes that not even their bitter smiles could mask.

      Oh God, was this what I had to look forward to?

      Confession: I am not ready to be an ex-girlfriend.

      This fact became glaringly apparent on my first real weekend of singledom. Derrick had flown out only three days prior with a promise to call once he was settled, though we had agreed that from now on, we were strictly friends. I will confess right now that he is the only “friend” I have ever had whom I secretly wished would fail miserably. In fact, I was practically preparing for the day when he would return to NYC, tail between his legs, begging me to take him back.

      Though Jade had invited me out for a girls’ night out with a couple of her friends from Threads, the fashion magazine where she worked as a clothes stylist, I opted to avoid an evening of gyrating on a dance floor looking fat and unfashionable next to Jade and her pseudosupermodel friends, in favor of a quiet evening at Alyssa’s.

      “You’ve been denied your right to be angry, Em,” Alyssa explained after she’d set me up with a martini. Two sips of it made me fall into a state of self-pity that I was attempting to wallow in until Lys cut me off with her “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” brand of advice.

      Sighing long and deep, I watched as she slid mushrooms expertly into a pan for the gourmet dinner she was cooking for her live-in boyfriend, Richard, who had yet to arrive home from his high-powered—and, need I say, high-paying—job as a corporate lawyer. Alyssa was a lawyer, too, but one of those earthy-crunchy ones who fight to save trees and make tap water fit for human consumption. In addition to being a top environmental lawyer and all-around hell of a gal, she liked to whip up heart-healthy, mind-expanding meals with names like wheat gluten casserole with roasted baby corn. Somehow these qualities, which I’d always admired in Alyssa before, began to depress me as I watched her cook. Is this what it took to maintain Girlfriend status? Maybe I should have made more of an effort with Derrick, whipped up something heartier than coffee with Cremora on all those Sunday mornings we spent together.

      “Just because he had a perfectly good reason to leave doesn’t mean you don’t have a perfectly good reason to be angry,” Alyssa continued, sautéing in earnest now, her curly brown shoulder-length hair swept up into a ponytail, her brow furrowed over her bright blue eyes.

      Though Alyssa knows me better than most, when it comes to this ex-girlfriend business she cannot relate. After all, Lys has been successfully dating since puberty. Once I asked her how she always managed to have a boyfriend on hand, and she laughed, saying she usually hung on to the guy long enough for them to grow completely sick of each other, then broke up with him just as New Boyfriend stood waiting in the wings.

      Now if this were any other girl, I might have said Alyssa suffered from Chronic Boyfriend Syndrome—a condition that leads many women not only to date, but also to plan their lives around men who are for the most part reprehensible but seem preferable to the other option…which is no boyfriend at all. But I can honestly say that despite her claims, I am sure Alyssa never dated a guy out of this kind of neediness. It is just that she is utterly lovable—so lovable, in fact, that most men upon meeting her wish they had an Alyssa of their very own.

      Her current beau, Richard, the first man Alyssa has ever dared live with and, I must admit, the best guy she’s ever been with, is a perfect example of this. Richard was the roommate of Alyssa’s last boyfriend, Dan. They were all in law school together, and since Alyssa pretty much lived at Dan’s place in order to avoid her own awful roommate, Richard took every opportunity to bond with her whenever he was in her warm and fun-loving presence. I can just imagine his joy when Dan up and moved back home to Ohio to practice law with his father’s firm, leaving Alyssa free and clear for Richard, who had already fallen hopelessly in love with her from the sidelines.

      Now, as Alyssa looked up from her mushrooms, silently demanding my assent to her psychobabble, I struggled for words to explain how I felt.

      “I don’t think I’m angry, Lys. I think I just miss him, is all.”

      “Well, get angry, Em,” Alyssa said, turning from her sauté to look at me. “You’re not going to get over this unless you do.”

      The thought of getting over Derrick horrified me. Derrick was the man I loved. My soulmate. Getting over him was not an option.

      “Mmm-hmm,” I muttered vaguely in response, and while I sat pondering the audacity of her suggestion, I found myself agreeing to stay to dinner with her and Richard, which, I realized later, was a mistake. As I watched them exchange tidbits of their day along with СКАЧАТЬ