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

hadn’t been afraid it was true.
    A year after that I was left even more suddenly than I’d left Christina when my film star girlfriend was seduced away by the lead singer from a rock-and-roll band we’d discovered and enjoyed together. I’d encouraged her to use her publicist to secure us seats to one of their sold-out New York shows. After a great night at the concert, having shared post-show beers with the band, we got home and heard a message from the band’s manager inviting my girlfriend, and only my girlfriend, to return the next night. The next night came and my girlfriend, exercising some short-term decorum, didn’t go. But within another week she was gone for good. I recently spent a couple of evenings with her for the first time in more than five years and asked if she was still in touch with her rock star pal. “Yeah, he calls once in a while,” she said. “But it got too crazy for me. I was always hearing about some nineteen-year-old or another.”
    What did she expect? I thought. Trace the story back just half an inch, and you could ask the same of me.
    Christina, whom I’d left for the actress, wrote a brilliant play in the aftermath of our breakup, which contained at least a few references to her rage toward me. It changed her life, gave her a pride and professional identity she’d never had before. I fell in love with her for the first time, including the year and a half we’d been together. I began an extended series of approaches in which I begged her to forgive me and take me back. I think there were a couple of occasions when she came close, but, ultimately, the most she ever offered was one of the parts in her play. I therefore got to be close to her by spending five ferociously hot summer weeks living in an un-air-conditioned college dormitory in the decrepit town of Poughkeepsie, New York, where I performed in her play nightly and watched her flirt with and, at least in my imagination, be seduced by a varying string of men around me. Christina and I never so much as kissed again. I admire her as much as anyone I’ve ever known, at least partly because she allowed me to break up with her only once.
    One brief affair that stands out in my memory from the years since was with a woman named Melissa. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have been an involvement that would have required an official breakup. We dated only briefly, and started to when she’d barely ended a long-term relationship with a man she’d been living with. Their split was so recent that, in one of those gloomy New York stories, they still shared an apartment as roommates in Brooklyn. After our second or third date Melissa started referring to me as her “boyfriend.” She couldn’t understand why I went pale with each reference. When I told her that I felt there was a difference between dating, exploring compatibility, and being in a committed relationship, she started referring to me as her “bad boyfriend.” I broke things off cleanly after only a few weeks. I thought I’d done it kindly. I told Melissa that I liked her quite a bit, that I thought she was a fantastic and loving woman, but that I just didn’t think the kind of deep feelings I craved were going to develop. Melissa was taken aback. She complained she’d been misled and betrayed.
    “What do you
meeeeaaaaaannnnn
?” she moaned in outrage. “How can you
saaaaaaaaay
that?” In one of the great exit lines I’ve had hurled my way, she demanded, “If you didn’t love me, how could you take me to see Ricki Lee Jones???”
    I really didn’t know what to say.
    And now I’ve split up with my second fiancée, Patricia. I thought for a while we’d get back together, but, so far, it’s back to a one-for-one average. In looking back over my various relationships I can’t help but feel sad. I wish I could go back and love the person better than I did the first time around. Some people claim to live lives free from regret. It sounds great, but I can’t relate.