Interview with an Ex-Boyfriend

*****Close relations of Dear Screwsan (mom, dad, grandpa, diabolical twin siblings) may prefer to skip the following entry. You have been warned.*****

Substance-induced amnesia notwithstanding, it’s never a question of remembering your first love. What’s a lot harder to remember is what you liked about your first, what you hated, what you used to cry about in your dark, deserted kitchens after your parents had gone to bed, the cords of your wall-mounted telephones wrapped like pythons across your hitching chests. Everyone’s got an assortment of ex-lovers. Like a bowl of leftover party mix at the end of a kegger, it’s stale and damp, but you can’t help remembering how good it tasted when you were drunk. C.T. was one of those rare Cheetos of a boy, someone who had never intentionally hurt my feelings. My first boyfriend. I hadn’t forgotten, but there were a few things that I couldn’t quite remember. I decided to call C.T. and ask him to discuss our high school relationship for my sex blog.
“Uh,” he said, “Hmm…What?” and then quickly, “All right. But let me call you back. I just got a BK Deluxe and I don’t want to lose my appetite before I get the chance to eat it. Also, I have to watch The Daily Show.” Already, I felt 15 again, sitting by the telephone, hoping it would ring, but knowing deep down in my heart that it probably wouldn’t, not for the likes of me. But he did call back, sounding a little more willing to talk on a full belly.

We dated for almost two years. When did we break up?
A week before my 18th birthday. It was Halloween night. Things had been sticky for a couple of months.

Sticky?
Remember, that summer your junior high crush, Mr. Collapsed Lung Man, came back and asked to hang out with you. That night I knew you were out with him, so I came over to your house. I went in your house, I tiptoed upstairs and I peeked in your bedroom and your bed was empty. I mean, I was all worked up, we had a time-table that we agreed upon ahead of time so I wouldn’t feel weird about you going out with this guy. You were supposed to call me at one or something, and now it’s three and I’m sneaking around your house.

And I had been making out with him.
Yeah.

I’m sorry...You know, about that night, I never told you this...
I’m scared...

Don’t be scared, I was just going to say that Mr. Collapsed Lung Man, he did this thing that night...it was so embarrassing...We were sitting on his porch and kind of making out and I was feeling badly about you, and then I felt something on the back of my neck and I jumped. I thought it was a moth or something. But it was...Okay, he went to an all-boys prep school, and apparently some of the boys had been discussing how women liked the feeling of leather on their skin, that it was a turn-on, and so he had ripped a leather tag off of a piece of his mom’s luggage, and started rubbing me with it. On my neck, my arms, all over.
Oh my god.

Yeah, it was awful. I was so embarrassed, I played along.
Well at least he was a total dork. That makes me feel better.

Oh, I forgot to ask, do you want your real name on this?
No. Call me Chief Truthseer

What? No, I’m not calling you Chief Truthseer. Maybe I’ll call you something really terrible.
Okay, that’s fair. Let me know what you come up with. So where were we?

We had good sex.
We had good sex. I remember, the first time, my parents had gone out, and we did it on the living room couch. It was December. I was actually 16. You were 15. I do like being able to say I have fucked a 15 year old.

Was that statutory rape?
(Wisftully) Yeah, maybe. The more I think about it...the other day I saw this standup comic I really used to like in high school, and he was talking about women at 35 being at their sexual peak...that once you got them to orgasm they would quiver. But I remember thinking, we did that...the whole quivering afterwards thing, we had it worked out. When you’re that age, you see movies and read books and you get a sense about how it’s supposed to work, what the end result is supposed to be, and I always thought we were giving those 35 year olds a run for their money.

It has since gone downhill for me.

How have things gone downhill?
I haven’t made out with anyone in 2 ½ years. Well, okay, one person. But she gave me blue balls. I’m 27 and I got blue balls. I feel like I haven’t had a break-the glass-boner in 2 ½ years. I’m a woman now. I have to be in the right mood, have the right music...

We had our first anal sex experiences together. Have you had any since?
There was definitely one relationship I had where that occurred...

...Regularly?
It was a short relationship. Similar to us, but not as finicky as you.

How was I finicky?
Well, you know, appropriately finicky. It had to be comfortable, ‘cause you know it hurts a little, and you’d...you know, it was your way or not at all.

What was the worst thing about me? Here, I’ll start with something as an example. One of the worst things about you was your Jurassic Park t-shirt you wore every day. It was the worst t-shirt ever made.
Oh yeah, I know. I just got obsessed with that [movie]. I wanted to promote it, support it. I just wish I had had a cooler Jurassic Park t-shirt, is what it comes down to. I always wanted cooler t-shirts in general, but I had other stuff on my mind.

Like anal sex.
Yes.

So something like that. What did you hate?
Okay so something I used to hate, well I didn’t so much hate it as love it, but when you’d get really angry, you’d yell at me “Just shut your fat face!” You were a smart girl, but we’d have these intellectual conversations and you’d just get so mad, they’d just devolve and you’d be screaming at me “I hate your fat fucking face!” That was great. We were good arguers.

You let me off easy with that.
You had dorky clothes too. You had farmer shirts...little red plaid cowboy shirts with pearl buttons.

You’re making that up, I don’t remember that.
It was a cowboy shirt. It was the first shirt I ever took off to expose your naked breasts.

Fine, but finish your story about how we broke up...
Senior year starts and it’s a rough couple of months after Collapsed Lung Man. You’re hanging out with your new group of friends and I’m jealous. It’s Halloween and J.B. was sitting in the car with us, doing an intervention, coaching us through our break up.

How awful.
Yeah. But we stayed friendly for a while. The good dramatic end was when I accidentally showed up at a New Year’s party thrown by, as it turned out, your new boyfriend. And you had just passed out and split your face open as I was walking in. You were hurt, I wanted to go talk to you. But you were grumpy, and your tooth was broken off, and you were hammered and through with me. It was so scary. I drove home in six inches of snow that night. I listened to soft songs on the radio.