I have a habit of becoming really close friends with my ex-girlfriends, which is a little strange I know, but it just sort of happens that way. This fact alone wouldn’t be such a big deal except when you combine it with my never failing ability to say the wrong thing to my girlfriend.
I’ve got Relationship Tourette’s.
With a little to fond a look in my eye I can ruin movies, books, even entire towns for my girlfriend Amanda as my remembrance of dates gone by with … we’ll call them all Allison … lingers just a little to long.
So it didn’t help when my girlfriend discovered some photos of one ex-girlfriend, (for the sake of the story) named Allison, who wasn’t exactly dressed to go out… of the bedroom.
“What is this?” Amanda demanded.
The question what is this can have one of two meanings, either you’ve gotten her something romantic or went above and beyond on some chore that needed doing, or you’re screwed.
I hadn’t bought her anything and I certainly hadn’t been helpful without being asked, so I knew whatever she was looking at would lead to trouble.
My stomach dropped when I saw the photos. It wasn’t as though I kept them for some nefarious purpose, I forgot they existed. But here Amanda was, excavating some lost artifact of a relationship gone by, raiding some lost ark of a shoe box, a Holy Grail of trouble, a temple of doom for my relationship. It was as if some high priest of Polaroid paper had reached from the photo and ripped her still beating heart out and she responded with a short round of swearing.
“Allison! Why’d it have to be Allison?” I asked myself, before trying to pretend I didn’t know who this girl was or how I came to own pictures of her. It was a tactic that’d last all of three seconds before my bluff would be called.
The argument quickly degenerated into a discussion over the definition of half naked, an argument I was not aided on by my old friend Wikipedia who seemed to disregard the whole encyclopedic approach to the question and instead opted to strike up more of a The Stranger from The Big Lebowski sort of tone, informing us that “the quantity of skin exposed is not the determining criterion, it's the "quality" that counts” for defining half naked.
My ex's name was icily received from then on, yet somehow my name managed to avoid a similar fate in Amanda's mind. We moved forward.
Yet for some reason I still had the misguided belief that Amanda and Allison would somehow hit it off and become best friends. If only they could meet they'd realize what kindred spirits they were and soon there'd be no more tension! The three of us could go for coffee regularly, or maybe the two girls would go for a day of shopping. We could have dinner parties and Allison could bring the wine, who knows maybe the three of us would all have a little to much of that wine and then...
Right, sorry. Back to the real world.
I had somehow convinced Amanda to come meet Allison over dinner at this restaurant. You may have thought this proposition would've been a battle to get Amanda to agree to, a difficult series of negotiations that could've helped me fill several paragraphs. Sadly she agreed to meet Allison immediately.
My efforts to prepare for the night were a different story. If I spent an extra minute then normal staring into the cotton void of my closet my motives were to be suspect. Apparently my desire to look less like Tom Hanks circa the second act of Cast Away signaled I was trying to hard.
Had I reached for the aftershave I surely would've found myself sleeping on the couch.
When your girlfriend meets your ex-girlfriend its like two worlds colliding, like the planet Theia being flung through space and smacking straight into the side of the Earth. If things don't go just right it could spell utter destruction. If by some astrological miracle though the two collide and it goes well, who knows, you may have inseparable friends. Like Theia becoming the Earth's moon.
That's the desired outcome, I thought as I drove to the restaurant. Allison mooning Amanda.
That probably could've been phrased better.
I was worrying more and more. What if the thing about the photos came up? If hair pulling and biting broke out amongst them would it be inappropriate for me to keep eating? If you knew that I had had to skip lunch earlier that day would you be more understanding if I did? Or what if on the flip side they started to get along a little to well. They started gossiping about me, Allison recounting everything she hated about dating me. Maybe that'd suddenly make Amanda see me in a new late, maybe suddenly the value of Ex would equal 2.
I had decided the whole plan was a mistake, but had only settled on this after we were saying our hello's to Allison.
I sat there, waiting for the first signs of disaster. Yet there were none.
In fact it almost seemed as though the two girls were hitting it off, trading horror stories about work and laughing.
By the time our meals arrived we were in a comfortable conversational rhythm. Things were truly going perfect, and at this rate by the time the waiter brought the bill we'd all be complaining about the price of gas with one another over brunch every Sunday.
Some wine was uncorked.
"This really is going well isn't it?" I said, deciding to launch into a director's commentary on the evening.
"Its funny, here we are with candle light and wine and I've had this fantasy for awhile now that starts off just like this."
"Oh?" my girlfriend asks warily.
"Yeah you know, the three of us all have a little to much wine and we end up coming back to my place and one of us says jokingly..."
I made the mistake of finishing this thought once, I'll try to avoid repeating the error.
In life like in astronomy it's not the threats you see coming that are the risk, its the ones you don't.
For me, my ever forgiving Amanda and the dozen or so Allison's before her, it's my Relationship Tourette’s.
