Broken Hearts Damaged Goods (5 page)

By

Jack Webber

I
got my first
girlfriend when I was in kindergarten.  It was a magical time where a boy and a
girl could play the perfect couple.  We were young enough and stupid enough to think
that love could just be sustained by enjoying each other’s company.

In that idyllic state,
I received my first kiss.  Like my relationship, it was simple and sweet.  We
weren’t going for complex.  We were just playing the common male and female
roles that we had seen on TV and in movies.

It seems that such a
relationship is not sustainable.  Boys and girls can’t play the sex roles that
they’ve grown up with.  They haven’t lived enough to know that humans are more
messed up than our parents and Hollywood would allow us to believe.

It is in this awkward
stage between grade school and junior high that boys and girls first learn that
they are better off without the opposite sex.  Bros before hoes.  Sisters
before misters.

And then comes junior
high when the girls start to become more attractive.  You don’t know why, but
you want to try to impress them.  You start changing your behavior to get their
attention.  You could blame it on some sort of weakness on your part, but the
fact of the matter is that women spend a large amount of time at this age to
make men weak.  It is actually rather cruel.  Men would complain, but there is
a certain bliss in the free fall.

It is during this stage
that I received my first true kiss.  It was at an eighth grade dance.  We were
doing a little slow dance.  I really liked this girl, and not because she was
fun to hang out with or because I thought she was cute.  We were no longer
playing roles.  We were getting to know each other.

More than an exploration
into foreign territory, the kiss was an expression of something deeper.  Even
if the relationship didn’t last, the feeling and sensation caused by that first
kiss keeps us wanting more and looking for more as we go through life.

As we search for more
of what we found in that first kiss, we sometimes feel something for the other
person.  Other times we are just exploring our options with what is available
to us at that moment.  Our emotional involvement waxes and wanes as we enjoy
the physical.  There are just the two camps of kissing.  We can do it for the
simple pleasure or as an expression of something different.

And that is what I
thought until last night when I made out with a girl that I am not dating and
have no intention of dating.  In fact, we have both agreed that we are just
using each other to get over our recent breakups.

I know that this may
sound cruel and uncaring, but kissing her last night was almost an epiphany. 
It wasn’t an empty, purely physical experience.  And yet, it also wasn’t an
expression of anything that I might be feeling for her.  It was...

It was a healing
experience where I was kissing her soul.  Of all of the women I have kissed, I
have never kissed a woman’s soul before.  This includes my longest
relationships where I thought that this was the person I was going to marry.

I might have to
seriously reconsider the wisdom of my mother whenever I would fall down as a
child.  I outgrew that stage of my life where I could fall down and have
somebody kiss it and make it better.  But as I am going through this breakup, I
might very much need somebody to heal the wounds that I can’t see or even
express. 

By

Jack Webber

E
verybody has a
personae that they like to project to the world.  Sometimes this is intentional
due to the fact that a great many of us would think that others would never
like us if we tried to be who we really are.  And then there are people like
Liselle, who are so much more than they seem to be.  It’s not that they are trying
to be somebody else.  They are just so easily pigeonholed and classified by
people that their true personality never seems to escape that label.

When I first met
Liselle, I thought she was like most of Steve’s other girlfriends.  She was
attractive, but she didn’t seem to have much else to her.  That doesn’t mean
that I didn’t think she wasn’t a nice person.  Steve and I have never really
had the same taste in women, until recently.  He has always preferred the eye
candy, while I have always gone for substance over style.

That is what has made
getting to know Liselle such a surprise.  There is a lot more to her than I
would have suspected.  And it makes me sad to think that men like Steve have
dated her for extended periods of time and never realized how truly beautiful
she is.  Worse still is that, with no man ever telling her this, she has no
idea herself.

I tried to tell her
myself, but I think it came out wrong.  She started crying.  And in logic that
no man ever really understands, she said that she wasn’t crying because I said
that she was beautiful; she was crying because I told her she was beautiful
when she was planning on making out with me.

You see, logic like
this confuses men, who by their very nature look at the world through cause and
effect.  In man’s natural viewpoint, when you tell a girl that she is beautiful
and she starts crying, it means that there is a correlation between the two. 
The cause: You told her that she was beautiful.  The effect:  She started
crying.  If you hadn’t told her that she was beautiful, she wouldn’t have
started crying.

And as a man, I can
tell you that men never like to make women cry, unless they are purposefully
trying to hurt them, but those are usually abusive and controlling men.  But
generally, when you are trying to do something nice like telling a girl that
she’s beautiful, you want it to be nice.  You want her to accept it in the
spirit in which it is given.  When she starts to cry, the man thinks that he
has done something wrong.  He then tries to make the woman stop crying, so he
does even nicer things than telling her she’s beautiful, which only causes her
to cry more.  All of this further confuses the boy.

What women do not
understand is that men see tears and crying as a bad thing.  You cry when you
are upset, when somebody close to you dies, or if you are extremely moved by
something like a book or a movie.  But crying at other times than these is
frowned upon by men.  There’s no reason for it.  There has to be a certain,
identifiable cause for the crying.

So, although I had
wanted her to accept my compliment as something that would bring her joy and
know that I found something about her as a person beautiful, her crying and
reasoning behind the crying really speaks volumes more to what I ultimately found
beautiful about her.

When I found out my
best old ex-friend Steve was messing around with my girlfriend, who would have
been my fiancé had she said, “Yes” when I proposed to her, instead of, “I’m
sorry to hurt you, but I’ve kind of been seeing your best friend behind your
back.  And I prefer him to you.”  Anyway, this found me drunk and lonely, which
was kind of how Liselle was, too.  For some reason, when a man and a woman are
both drunk and lonely, it is usually cause enough for the two of them to fool
around.

I am not sure what the
woman’s reasoning behind going along with this is.  The man’s reasoning and
logic in these cases is usually pretty sound.  It very rarely has anything to
do with the alcohol or being lonely.  It usually has more to do with the cold,
hard facts of one being a man while the other is a woman.  It seems only
natural that when a single man finds a woman, who is also single, that he
should in some way see if he can couple off with her.  How long the coupling
off will last really depends on a number of factors, but the man will worry
about that later.  At this stage, he is just interested in being with a girl. 
If it doesn’t work out, he can always use the “drunk and lonely” excuse.  It’s
basically the dating world’s equivalent of the insanity plea.

So Liselle and I found
ourselves drunk, lonely, of sound state of mind, and back at her place.  We
were curing our current problems with an act of revenge and by helping somebody
else out that was in a similar situation.  Now, I know this doesn’t sound very
beautiful.  In fact, I would even admit that it sounds a little down and dirty,
but I... It’s not that I couldn’t perform, or didn’t find Liselle attractive, I
was still in love with somebody else and didn’t want to do anything stupid that
would screw up my chances of being able to fix a broken relationship.

Liselle understood this
and was there for me that first night when my whole world had come crashing
down on me.  She was a greater friend as somebody I only knew through somebody
else than some of my actual friends.  She was also a much greater comfort than
any bottle of alcohol.

I’m not going to say
that I was suicidal that night, or the next couple of days after that, but I
found certain bright spots in being with Liselle in the days immediately after
the breakup.  This is one of the reasons that I told her she was beautiful. 
But it wasn’t just that she was a comfort to me.  In a way, she defied my
expectations and proved herself to be more beautiful.

Knowing the type of
girl Steve usually dates, I would not have been surprised if they would have
slept with me to get back at him for cheating on them.  It would have been the
revenge game.  But Liselle...

As I have gotten to
know her, I have discovered that she felt something for Steve, which kind of
surprises me.  Most of the girls that he dates are in the relationship because
he is reasonably attractive and fun to be around.  She saw things in him that I
saw in him as my best friend.  That’s not saying that I don’t find the guy to
be total dick at this moment in time.  But it is somehow validating for me to
know that I wasn’t crazy in thinking this son of a bitch was my best friend
from the time that I was six.  It’s always nice to know that the majority of my
existence wasn’t spent having fun with a girlfriend stealing man-whore that
puts getting some ahead of his closest personal relationships.

Even though she cared
for him, she doesn’t seem to be as hurt as I am by being cheated on and dumped. 
I admit that my last relationship lasted longer than hers and Steve’s, but she
seems to be quite alright with not being with him.  I tried to understand this
because I want to know if I am lingering on the past.  There is also a part of
me that wanted to know what their relationship was like and why it failed.  I
wanted to try to understand her thinking and feelings.

I didn’t expect it to
turn into one of the deepest conversations I have ever had with a woman.  She
told me about the problems that she had been having with Steve since school started
and how she had tried to save the relationship.  She told me about how she had
raped him one night when he was really drunk and had wished that she could have
had a relationship with him like I had with Brittany.  And then she went into
her past boyfriends and other sexual exploits.

I know that this may
not sound exactly beautiful, but you didn’t hear her talk about it.  She never
tried to justify any of her previous behavior, or say that she has changed.  I
think she regrets some of her exes, but she doesn’t offer any apologies.  She
seems to have been looking for love and willing to give more of herself than
she should have.  It was like she was playing the lottery with these men.  She
was willing to unapologetically go all in for a chance of something that could
have paid off.  If it didn’t work, at least she gave it her best shot.

As somebody who maybe
guards his heart a little bit too much, I have to admire somebody who has the
courage and nerve to love as if there is no tomorrow.  She knows that by
exposing everything that she has to the person she cares for that she opening
herself up to heartache, but she is willing to take that chance.  I think there
is something beautiful about that.

And when I think about
it, it is even more beautiful because she has never closed up her heart after
having been hurt.  She doesn’t judge all men based on what one has done.  She
still thinks that there could be a perfect guy for her out there that will give
her everything she has been looking for.

And I don’t know why,
but with her crying and everything that she was saying, I couldn’t help but to
kiss her soul.  I wanted to make her understand that she was beautiful and that
I truly thought she was beautiful.

I don’t know when I
will be cured from my broken heart.  Hopefully I will be able to love again and
be able to love the way that Liselle does.  Until that time, I expect to have
her reveal more of her true beauty and to help me to be whole again.  And maybe
by the time she helps me to accomplish this; I can actually make her understand
just how beautiful she is.  Otherwise, she’ll never know.

Sept. 18, 2010

Jack and I went to a
party tonight.  I don’t think he really wanted to go, but I thought that it
would be good for him.  We have basically been isolated from a mutual group of
friends.  As much as I like spending time with him, I think he needs to go out
and see some of his guy friends.

Although I knew that
Steve and Brittany would be at this party, I still thought that we should go. 
His friends wanted him to go.  I think that was partly to know that he was
okay.  There were also rumors that Jack and I had been sleeping together ever
since the breakup.  I think they were curious whether this was out of revenge,
or if we were just screwing each other because of the fun of it.

Since the breakup,
Steve and Brittany have officially become a couple.  They were Facebook
official and everything.  It didn’t even take them 24 hours to go from being in
a relationship with us to being single to being in a relationship with another
person.  I think they thought it made it look better if they were a couple
versus just being two people who were cheating on their exes with each other.

Our friends had already
accepted Steve and Brittany as an actual couple, even though they knew the
circumstances behind their getting together.  Jack and I, on the other hand,
were a curiosity.  Maybe we didn’t want to be legitimate.  There is a certain
amount of wanting to enjoy that feeling of being newly single where you can do
whatever you want with whomever you want whenever and however you want.  Jack
and I sort of went to the party with this attitude.

We also went with the
understanding that we would flaunt ourselves at this party.  We wanted to show
that we were doing okay.  I knew that this was going to be easier for me since
I was already over Steve.  I wasn’t too thrilled about seeing him with
Brittany, but I was over him.  Jack would have to be the one who did the
majority of the real acting.  I went to the party knowing that I would have to
be his support system.  This may not be the best way to go to a party, but it
is what he needed.

The party started
okay.  We made our scandalous entrance.  Jack kept his arm around my waist. 
We made all sort of private comments to each other.  Once we proved our
legitimate couplehood, we casually went our separate ways.  I ended up talking
to Megan, while Jack was talking to Dave and Chris.

Megan gave me crap the
moment that I was alone with her.  She applauded me on my performance with
Jack.  She wondered whether we could keep it up when Steve and Brittany showed
up.

I tried to act like I
didn’t know what she was talking about, so she became more direct and asked me
how I was going to handle seeing the guy I loved show his feelings for a woman
other than me.

Megan is my best
friend.  I love her dearly, but I don’t know why she thinks I am falling for
Jack and that he doesn’t care for me at all, or will ever like me.  I mean, I
don’t love him.  I just think he is a really sweet guy.  He’s funny and fun to
hang out with.  He’s just....

Okay.  While I was
talking to Megan, I think he could tell that I was getting a little bit upset
with her.  Maybe it was because I was looking at him while I was talking to
her, which he caught me looking at him and smiled at me.  But when I started to
lose the argument that I was falling for him when I shouldn’t be, he came over
to me and put his arms around my waist and started to kiss me.  He just
interrupted me midsentence, and I went along with him.

The best part was that
when he was finished, he acted like he hadn’t noticed Megan standing there. 
“Oh, I’m sorry.  Were you girls talking about something important?”

Megan seemed a little
taken off guard.  “No, we were just discussing you...”

Jack then shot a look
at me that was a little flirty and playful.  “Oh, so I’m the subject of girl
talk.  Somebody must be falling for me.”

I was too busy blushing
to really appreciate the look on Megan’s face.  Of course, it was nothing
compared to the look on her face when Jack turned to her and said, “But it’s
okay.  I’ve fallen for her, too.  Just don’t tell her.  I think she should hear
it from me first.”

He then winked at me
and started to walk away.  I started to say something to Megan, when Jack
turned back around and with all seriousness said, “And, Liselle, in case I
forget to tell you later, you look amazing tonight.”

The man makes my vagina
hurt.  He also made Megan stop from giving me a lecture about falling in love
with a guy that isn’t capable of loving me.  I mean, the man is probably not
capable of loving me right now, but he holds the potential.  I’m okay with that
right now.  I would rather fake having a boyfriend with a guy that is sweet,
sincere, genuine, and who has actually thought more about me than the majority
of the guys I’ve actually dated than to be actually dating somebody that
pretends to love me when their actions don’t match their words.

I’m not saying Jack is
my boyfriend, or that I am considering him my boyfriend.  I’m just saying that
it is nice to be with a guy that can sense when I want him near and knows what
to say and do at these moments.  What I’m saying is that I really like him and
that I’m willing to do without an official name on our relationship.

Anyway, about twenty
minutes later, Steve and Brittany showed up.  They tried to act like everybody
was glad to see them and that nothing was wrong, but the fact of the matter was
that everybody was trying to find me and Jack.  We were kind of spread across
the room since I was still talking to Megan and he was hanging out with Dave
and Chris.  That didn’t make it look like we were much of a couple.

Megan warned me not to
do anything stupid, which meant that I made my way over to Jack and sat on his
lap.  You should have seen the look on Brittany’s face.  She gave me the
evilest look I have ever gotten from another woman, which is saying a lot.

I probably shouldn’t
have been so loving on Jack at that moment, especially since I couldn’t exactly
read what he was feeling.  I think his heart was re-breaking.  Any healing that
had occurred was now gone.  Here he was with a girl that was throwing herself
at him while he was watching his ex with his former best friend.  He knew that
they were a real couple and that we were just a cheap imitation.  Well, I was just
cheap.  I should never have...

I should have been
there for him, instead of trying to prove to somebody else that we were a
couple.  It’s just that Steve and Brittany looked so happy.  And Brittany
looked absolutely stunning.  They looked like more of a couple together than
Jack and Brittany or Steve and I ever did.

They had planned their
appearance at this party a lot more than Jack and I had.  We just looked
stupid.  I probably looked more stupid than he did.  After it clicked that he
wasn’t responding to me nibbling on his ear, I apologized for making him come
to the party.

He then looked at me
and was quiet for a few seconds.  He was searching my eyes, and then he started
to kiss me.  He wasn’t making out with me.  I mean, it was a make out session,
but it wasn’t just about the physical pleasure.  He was kissing something more
to me than just me.

I was kind of taken
aback by this, but I was enjoying it a little bit too much to really question
it.  It probably lasted a minute or so.  I just know that when he stopped, I
was left there, on his lap, with my eyes closed, and totally speechless.

When I finally opened
my eyes, which was a noticeably delayed reaction, I saw Jack smiling at me.  He
was just enjoying the look on my face.  Dave and Chris were just staring at me
and Jack in disbelief.  Jack finally broke the silence by saying, “Don’t look
now, but I think we’ve pissed off Steve and Brittany.”

“So how long are we
going to be avoiding them?”

“Are we avoiding them? 
That’s a little rude, don’t you think?  We should go over there and show them
that we are mature adults.”

So Jack and I got up
and walked over to Steve and Brittany.  I was a bit giddy and enjoyed holding
hands with him on the way over there.  And he was a gentleman- happy, but not
really showing what he was feeling.  I think he was feeling more for me than
for Brittany, which is all I really cared about at this time.  That’s enough
for me.

I’ve been drunk at
parties before, but I have never been love drunk before.  I couldn’t imagine
being any happier than I was at that moment.  In many ways, it was like the
first time that I had ever fallen in love, but it was more intense.  I was more
alive, and it seemed more real.

And somehow in the
following blur of events, Jack and I ended up competing against Steve and
Brittany in a game of beer pong.  I think Jack and I were winning.  I wasn’t
really paying attention to the game.  I was kind of enjoying the fact that Jack
was so amazing and that it was pissing Brittany off so much.

And that is when I received
a sobering bitch slap.  Brittany noticed that I was wearing Jack’s ring.  Well,
it was Brittany’s ring, but Jack gave it to me.  Anyway, she still felt that
she had some sort claim to the ring, even though she turned him down.

The game just sort of
stopped as Jack and Brittany went back and forth over the true ownership of the
ring.  Jack was firm but civil in his responses to her.  But Brittany had it in
for me.  The last thing I remember her saying was something like, “My God,
Jack.  You don’t just give a diamond ring to the first slut that will fuck
you.”  I don’t know what his response to that was.  I sort of ran off to the
bathroom and started to cry.

Whatever his response
was, he must have finished the argument with it because he was knocking on the
bathroom door to see if I was alright.  I wanted to be alone, but I couldn’t
exactly leave him out there either.  So I opened the door and without talking
to him, I sat on the side of the bath tub.

Jack, seeing that I
wasn’t going to talk to him about what was wrong, closed the bathroom door and
locked it.  He then sat next to me on the tub and put his arm around me.

You can tell a lot
about a guy by what he does when you’re crying.  Some don’t know what to say,
so they just sit there in silence and hope that they are able to be comforting
enough when you are willing to start talking about it.  Others ask you if you
want to talk about it and then say that they are there for you when you do want
to talk about it.  And then there’s Jack.

Jack is the type of guy
who sits there quietly for a minute, holds you while you cry, and doesn’t ask
if you want to talk about it.  Instead he breaks the awkward silence with, “Do
you know the other night when I said you were beautiful?  You become more
beautiful the more time I spend with you.”

And as I started to cry
even more at words that I didn’t exactly want to hear at that moment, he
continued, “The night I gave you that ring, I was lost, hurt, and lonely.  My
world had come to an end.  You were there for me, opened your home up to me,
and kept me from doing things I would later regret.  And it may not seem like
much to you, but your simple acts of kindness probably saved my life that night
and for the next few days after.”

Hearing him admit that
he was suicidal made my being called a slut seem not so important, so I looked
at him as he went on, “You may not believe it, but I think I gave that ring to
the right girl.”

He then kissed me on
the forehead and held me just a little tighter.  And I wanted to say something,
but I didn’t quite know what to say.  We ended up looking in each other’s
eyes.  And there was that moment where you think you’re going to kiss each
other.  It would have been a kiss that would have meant something.

But before we could
maneuver into the kiss, there was a knock at the door.  Some drunk guy had to
pee.  He just kept knocking and yelling, “Come on.  Hurry up in there.  I’ve
got to piss like a mother fucker.”

I looked at Jack and
was horrified.  I couldn’t go out there and have everybody know that I was
crying, but I didn’t know how to tell Jack that.  Anyway, there was no way to
stop him.  Before I could say anything, Jack was up next to the door and
pounding against it as if he was having sex.  “Just a minute, Dude.  I’ve got a
girl in here, and I can’t stop now.”

Before I could bust out
laughing, Jack motioned for me to be quiet.  He then just continued to bang up
next to the door and fake an orgasm.  But the drunk guy wouldn’t be deterred. 
“Couldn’t you just take her to one of the bedrooms?”

“Good God, Man!  Do you
want get blue balls?  Piss outside if you have to.  Oh, fuck, yes, there. 
Shiiiiit.  Fuck.”

Jack then looked at me
and motioned if I was ready to go.  I whispered that I couldn’t go out there
when it looked like I had been crying.

So Jack continued to
fake an orgasm as he moved away from the door.  “Oh, you dirty bitch.  Yes”,
and then he turned on the water on the bathtub.  And when the water was warm
enough, he turned on the shower and motioned for me to get in.  I looked at him
like he was crazy.

“Get in.  Nobody will
know that you were crying.  They will just think we had sex in the shower” was
his response to me.  And it was so crazy, that I wanted to go along with it. 
So I stepped inside the shower with one of my favorite outfits on.

Jack then got in with
me and greeted me with, “You know you could show some signs of pleasure
yourself.  Right now it’s not looking very good for me.”

So there we were in the
shower with our clothes on faking orgasms.  It was quite possibly the most fun
I have ever had.  It was just crazy and funny.  And Jack was wonderful.  When
he faked his climax, he fell into me as if he were exhausted.  He then fake
apologized, “I’m sorry if I came before you did.  I hope you still enjoyed it.”

“It was the best I’ve
never had”, I said finally laughing.