Free It's Only Temporary: The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive by Evan Handler Page A

the connection survived. When I was sure I had to go, and when telling her I’d met someone else I was interested in and wanted to pursue wasn’t enough to unseal the deal, I fouled the waters in the only irreparable fashion I knew. I told Graciella the truth: I said that, while I thought she had oodles of gifts to offer, I didn’t think they were in the arena of acting. I told her I didn’t think she had the talent to get what she wanted in that world, and that I thought she was cheating herself out of potential happiness and fulfillment by continuing in her unrequited quest.
    Graciella told me that if I didn’t respect her as an actress then I couldn’t respect her as a human being. She announced that she wouldn’t stay with me even if I changed my mind. “Oh, and by the way. Remember when my ex-boyfriend Ryan was in town two years ago and stayed over and I told you we didn’t have sex? Well, I lied.”
    It’s disturbing to learn you’ve been deceived, even when you’ve decided you’re through with a relationship. I took Graciella’s exiting jab as evidence I was making the right decision. Years later, I learned she was living happily in New Jersey working as a master Yoga instructor, so I suppose I was right about her future as an actress, too.

     
    The woman I left Graciella for is named Jackie. Just weeks after we’d moved in together, after being a couple for a year, I was diagnosed with acute leukemia and told that my life was almost certainly over. Jackie remained my girlfriend and supporter during years of navigating the treacherous terrain of drastic medical treatments. I’ve already said more about our relationship in print than anyone ever wanted to hear to begin with. Suffice it to say that she’s the one I broke up with seven times – if not more. The final split was sixteen years ago, and she’s been my closest friend ever since. I guess it pays, when ending a relationship, to really be sure.
    This sad recap has already brought us into my thirties. I suppose my precocious professional success, as well as my four-year stint with a woman six years my senior, shielded me from recognizing my often infantile behavior. It was only in the midst of my next attempt at a relationship, and its multiple breakups, that I had the first inklings of my own immaturity. I met and began seeing a woman named Ellie, and things seemed for a time to be stable. I felt, amazingly enough, relatively content. There were the rather routine nights when I’d wake up at three in the morning to find her crying in another unlit room, but she’d assure me that it had nothing to do with me or us, and that crying regularly alone in the dark at 3 A.M. didn’t really mean anything anyway. I accepted her explanations, figuring if she couldn’t share her worries with me, I wouldn’t make them my problem. I then developed an infatuation with an actress I was working with who liked nothing better than fucking other women’s boyfriends and husbands, and I started the grueling process of breaking up with Ellie and changing my mind so many times that she finally shoved me out her door for good. But things were – all in all – coming, somewhat, back under control. All told, I think Ellie and I broke up only three times.

     
    My next girlfriend, Christina, is one of the people in this world I admire the most. She took every episode of my insensitivity toward her and, with great creativity, aimed it back at me. Christina has been the Roadrunner to my Wile E. Coyote. I left Christina, after a year and a half, with brutal swiftness, when I met and fell in love with an actress who seemed poised to have some success as a film star. Shortly after our breakup, Chris requested a meeting at my apartment. “You’re a monster,” she said. “I hate you, and I wish you a miserable life.” At the time she said it I thought her tirades were proof that I’d made the right choice. Of course, it wouldn’t have been so hard to hear if I