Mr. Unavailable #111: The Measure of a Man

To start from the beginning of the #111 story, see (in this order) Could it Be?, It's Not Him, It's Me, The Recovery, We're Just Not That Into Each Other, The Continuation, The Curse is Broken, Unfortunately, The Make-Up Date, The Phone Call, The Negotiation, Dates 9 Through 12, Dates 13 Through 15, The Public Sex Talk, Bridging the Chasm, The Shut Down, All Kinds of Good, Meeting the Friends, Part 2, Hamptons Getaway, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Happy Birthday to Me, The Drunken Text, Jeckyl and Hyde, The Layoff, One-Man Show, A Boy in Man's Clothing, The Doctors Visit, Giving Him the News, The Appointment, The Sad Ultrasound, In Between Appointments, The Last Breakfast, Arizona Convalescence and Knocking Him Off His Pedestal for the background on this one.

I've been thinking a lot about one of the last scenes in the movie Heathers, the 1989 black-comedy classic that my friends and I watched dozens of times in high school, memorizing every line. The scene goes like this: Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) has a gun trained on Jason Dean, aka J.D., (Christian Slater) who's wielding a knife. They're both exhausted and bloodied in the school's boiler room, where J.D.'s planted a bomb after having killed a couple of co-eds.

They're discussing the sad state of teenager-hood and J.D. says, "What do you really want?"

"You know what I want, babe?" Veronica says. Then J.D. goes for her with the knife.

She shoots him, he collapses and she finishes her thought: "Cool guys like you out of my life."

This, I've decided, is what I want, too. Except I can't shoot #111 to get it. (And, when he doesn't die from the gunshot wound, I can't just hope that he's going to strap himself to a bomb and blow himself up. But I digress.)

Where #111 and I had left things was that we'd get lunch in a few weeks (i.e., right around now) to catch up in person. It was my idea--to be friends, to play nice, to (I secretly hoped) make him realize what a huge mistake he'd made. To tell you the truth, being in touch with him worked wonders. It got me through a suicidal Fall and then both Thanksgiving and Christmas in one piece. I'd been able to function because we had agreed to see each other again. It had given me hope.

And then two things happened. In my work life, even though I didn't want the job-I-didn't-want, I lost the job-I-didn't-want and, well, it felt really bad. My ego was thoroughly busted (to recap: I got dumped, accidentally pregnant and had now been let go from two jobs all within about three and a half months). I began to rethink things. #111 did, after all, dump me four days after I lost my previous job. And, based on the sounds of his four-year relationship as well as on what I'd experienced with him, it seemed as though he wanted something comfortable, something easy, where he could just move into his girlfriend's life and worry about nothing. Having to support a girlfriend emotionally and maybe even financially was probably not part of his plan. So it only made sense that when I got let go (the first time), he was out of there.

That's probably why--when we were emailing around Thanksgiving--it was extremely satisfying for me to share the only two good things about the job-I-didn't-want: the frozen yogurt machine and the fact that I had my own office. #111 was so competitive/jealous he never even asked what or where the job was. Or if I even liked it. He probably just assumed it was some great writing gig, which alone would be enough to make him feel bad about himself. So, having to sit across from him at lunch and tell him I'd gotten let go from yet another job did not sound like a good time. I could only imagine how smug he'd be.

And the second thing that happened? I'd actually started to move on. I'd gone on dates and had met a guy I liked.

I began to wrestle with the question: to lunch or not to lunch. I mean, why not let him believe I walked off into the sunset without him? I called Kevin one tormented night ("I can't tell if you're half asleep or bleeding out," he said). It wasn't the first time someone said what he said, but it was the first time I was ready to hear it: "I think you need to let [#111] go," he said. "He wasn't really all that great a guy."

He was right.

It reminded me of another time Kevin had some good advice. It was when I was trying to extricate myself from my feelings over My Crush:

"You need a new strategy," he said.

I asked him what that new strategy was.

"You need to move on quicker."

So simple but so brilliant. I needed a new strategy here, too. It had already been this long and I had already gotten this far and #111 and I hadn't even been together that long and there was already another guy on the horizon. And Kevin was right. #111 wasn't really that great a guy. He was kind of mean. And grumpy. And selfish.

I sat in my therapist's office and surrendered. "He wasn't really all that great," I repeated. He was, indeed, all the things above. But, most importantly, he couldn't open up. He couldn't look at himself. He couldn't be vulnerable. He showed me his vulnerable side once but that was after we'd already broken up and, as my shrink said, "he couldn't sustain it."

The last communication between us had come from him. It was the perfect way to leave things. He had the last word.

The door is still open if he wants to walk through it. But from what I know of him, he won't. And, from my side, walking through the door might only serve to get my hopes up. Or worse, if I reach out to him and he doesn't want to see me, that would only open things back up in the worst way. I've come too far right now to risk either of those things.

He really wasn't all that great. I mean, he couldn't even call me. I'm truly beginning to appreciate guys who aren't afraid to use the phone. In fact, #118 called me today to make a date for this weekend. If being able to use the phone is the measure of a man, then #111 may have looked like a man, but he was just a boy. Just like Veronica Sawyer realized J.D. was really a psychopath, #111 was really a boy who was too cool for a real relationship. It's true. You know what I want? Cool guys like him out of my life.