My Strangest Breakup

I broke up with Mar for the final time in October. Mar was about 5'3", an attractive girl of Japanese descent who had recently graduated from college and was in the process of applying to graduate schools. She was also taking 8 or 9 prescription pills everyday for everything from anxiety to social phobia to insomnia and was seeing both a psychiatrist and a therapist every week. There was a pattern to our relationship---she would say or do something I considered insulting or offensive and i would break up with her. Within ten days, I would take her back. Rinse, repeat. Finally, I decided not to take her back anymore.

"OK", she texted me, "I undrstnd. Sry I cant be good g-friend 2 u."

Then she called me. "I'm at Shelly's watching lesbian porn. Shelly likes you."

It was true. During one of our previous breakups Shelly had asked Mar about my availability.

"Do you want me to send Shelly over to your house? You'd make a good couple."

Normally I would seek a powerful reality check. To have a girl you have just broken up with attempt to set you up with one of her friends is so completely outside the boundaries of expected behavior that in the past, I would have looked around for Rod Serling. After seven months with Mar, however, I was not surprised one bit.

"Sure," I responded drily, "send Shelly over." It was time to seal the breakup. Time to sabotage any inclination either of us might have to get back together. One of the most effective ways of accomplishing this is to sleep with your ex's friend. "Send Shelly over."

"I'll be over with her in a bit."

Shelly was a bisexual graduate student, and sometimes after living in Chicago for so long I'm inclined to ask, "and who isn't?". She was not pretty---she was heavier than I usually date, with facial hair on her upper lip, unkempt hair and never a trace of makeup. However, she was brilliant, well-read, a superb conversationalist and that adjective that is so hard to define with certainty, cool. I have been turned on by girls who were cool before, even if they were not pretty.

The buzzer rang and I went down to the gate just in time to see Mar run away, leaving an embarrassed Shelly standing with a bottle of wine in her hand. I guided her up to my apartment, we opened the wine and spent 15 minutes discussing American poetry. Time to seal the breakup, I thought to myself.

"Would you like to make out?" I asked Shelly.

"Yes."

We started kissing, and I felt sandpaper across my face. I hadn't noticed that she had hair on her chin and cheeks as well. Still, the kisses were good---just the right amount of pressure for this time in the make-out session.

We went to my bedroom and I took off her clothes.

"I should explain about my armpits and legs," she said, "....my last lover was a woman, and women are not particular about that sort of thing. She was a professional dominatrix."

She had more hair than I did! I should mention that I'm not averse to a reasonable amount body hair. In the shaved/unshaved debate, I'm truly fine either way. This girl, however, was supporting an Amazon Jungle that had probably never been trimmed or plucked, and I wondered momentarily if it might contain its own ecosystem. As my mouth worked its way down her breasts to her chest and stomach, I thought, this is what it must feel like to be with a man.

We went down on eachother and then back to our glasses of wine, which was actually where I felt most comfortable. After she left, I washed my hands and face and lay down on top of the bed. I knew what would happen. I would get a text message from Mar asking for details. Then, within two days I would get an agonized phone call along the lines of...."David, I made a horrible mistake!!" I would deal with it then. I turned off the light and went to sleep.