Yesterday my boyfriend and I broke up. We did it lying down on the grass between Fountain and Pine Street. The whole time, my eyes were fixed on this weird little shack in middle of the courtyard. On the side of the shack two things are written in graffiti: the word “DUMB” scrawled violently over a heart, and then words “GOODBYE HOME.”
In middle of breaking up, a strange voice repeated something one of us had just said. “There are layers to everything.” Is that God? I thought. It wasn’t God. The voice belonged to that boy who was in the news for stealing the egg. Suddenly his face was looming over ours at a menacing angle, kind of like how it looked in the paper.
“A mosey in the meadow?” asked Booth as he looked down at us.
At this I laughed. We were clearly not moseying. My face was clearly gleaming with tears. Usually when people see people crying they get uncomfortable and go away. But Booth stayed for a few minutes. I liked this. It made me feel like I had nothing to be ashamed of, that whatever was going on here on the grass was natural as eating eggs, mushrooms n’ shit from the wild. Booth asked my boyfriend to tell his father to bring guns up to graduation so they could shoot some deer. Then I thought of a joke. “Hey Booth why don’t you shoot a [ ]? But I couldn’t think of an endangered species that lived in the area and I’m not very good at telling jokes when I’m crying, so I let it go to that place where untold jokes go, next to ideas for screenplays and compliments for strangers.
When Booth left, we resumed breaking up. The reason we were breaking up was unclear. Neither one of us really wanted to do it. In one month we are moving to different states and I guess it just seemed like part of the business of leaving Wesleyan.
”Can we call it ‘letting go’ instead of breaking up?“ I asked.
”Letting go is nicer way of saying ‘you’re fired’“ my now ex-boyfriend pointed out.
Breaking up is a weird process. Just as you are about to become each other’s exes you say all these nice things to each other, and then in between these nice things there are tender silences. You point out little things you are going to miss.
”I always loved that hair coming out of the mole on your cheek,“ my boyfriend said to me. I didn’t want it to end, this break up. But finally it had to. I had to pee. For this we would have to go inside. The boy who was now my ex-boyfriend followed me to the bathroom. There was something appropriate about this being the site of our final hug, and then me going into the door that read ”Girls.“ That he couldn’t cross this threshold seemed final and dramatic.
After studying my newly single and tearstained face in the bathroom mirror, and plucking that goddamn pesky hair on my cheek, I went into a computer lab to change my facebook.com profile. After clicking ”cancel relationship,“ facebook.com asked me a question I’d forgotten to ask myself. Are you sure you want to remove your relationship with X? It was then I realized I didn’t. Not at all. Anyone who was in the ST computer lab yesterday afternoon around two would have seen a girl staring at her own page on facebook.com, weeping. I got embarrassed and for this reason felt compelled to print the page that asked this question and show it to people around me. ”I’m sorry,“ the boy two computers down from me nodded soberly.
My boyfriend and I broke up under the condition that we would get back together. Two hours after parting outside the bathroom, we did. Then all the sadness became a joke. I can’t believe we broke up! Isn’t it hilarious we broke up! Already word of our break up had spread and each time a friend called to see if I was alright, I buckled in laughter. But the silliness of it was tempered by the reality that we are still graduating in a month. One of the first things we did after getting back together was designate the moment of our next break up: when we toss our caps at graduation. This, too, seems like a bit of a joke.
The other night on the bus to senior cocktails I sat with a girl who recently broke up with her boyfriend. While the bus was still sitting in the parking lot, a look of grave despair suddenly crossed her face. Her gaze was fixed on a figure outside the window.
”Breaking up isn’t so bad,“ I said to her. ”Out of sight, out of mind, right?“ And as soon as I said these words I realized I wasn’t sure if I was trying to comfort her or seek reassurance. But either way they were dumb words.
”Yes, well right now, he is in my sight and he is on my mind,“ my friend said crisply.
Once the bus started moving an air of excitement took hold. We were dressed up and drunk. People started singing ”the wheels on the bus go round and round!“ The windows were cracked and peals of cool night air slapped our faces as we barreled down the narrow highway. Outside the windows it was so dark you could just barely make out where the swollen hills of Connecticut ended and the sky began. There was something frivolous and silly about the whole thing. We didn’t know where we were going or when exactly we’d get there. But we were young and giddy and there was a blind faith that we’d climbed on the right bus and that the driver knew where he was going.
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