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  A continuation of Chapter 2 in Suzy Soro's unreleased book.
Scotty calls the wedding off ... after moving to Berkeley without Suzy's knowledge. Suzy goes to visit like a good little girl and after two days, leaves to return home. She wanted the plane to crash to avoid facing her friends after being dumped ... We continue now with more of Chapter 2.
All the Bad Sex I’ve Had, a very, very, very long book (Part 10) I moped around the house after Scotty and I broke up. My father got me a minimum wage job in the mailroom of his law firm where I listened in on other people's calls and opened up other people's mail, things I would end up doing for free for the rest of my life.
I started sneaking sips of Jack Daniels from my parents' liquor cabinet at night. I had witnessed my father passing out cold after drinking it so I figured it would do the same for me and that I could turn off the faucet in my head that kept dripping the word 'Dumped' every three seconds. I pulled Scotty's jockey shorts over my head and cried myself into drunken slumber. They were so stretched out that one night the underwear slipped down around my neck and I just left them there in the morning.
I lost my appetite but started to crave sugar. As the days stretched into weeks and Scotty didn't call I became a fan of The Hot Fudge Sundae, which would one day morph into hot fudge martinis and Amstel Light Sundaes. And Mondaes. And Tuesdaes. Unbelievably I didn't gain any weight, which in later years would piss off every woman who was ever my friend. It was the one great benefit of heartbreak for me and it lasted my entire life; my stomach would close up like an East Hampton beach house in the winter. I may have looked like shit, but I looked like thin shit.
My parents began to whisper whenever I was out of hearing range and would suddenly get quiet when I walked into the room. Can't a person wear stretched out men's Jockeys around their neck and eat Hot fudge Sundaes for breakfast without everyone having a cow? They were probably happy that Scotty dumped me, the idiots. Didn't they realize this was my last chance to find happiness, three thousand miles away from them? Or maybe they had discovered the nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniels. I didn't have any alcoholic friends in those days so I didn't know enough to replace the booze with iced tea.
One weekend Magda came home from her freshman year at Princeton and found me in the kitchen eating Cool Whip straight out of the container.
"Z, you do know that Cool Whip is supposed to go on other food, right?"
And then, right when I thought I couldn't stand anything anymore for any reason, my best college friend Annie called. I suspected that my parents might have called her behind my back, but at that point in time, I didn't care and it didn't matter.
Annie was also from New York City and we had stayed in touch during the summers. She and I had once drunk so much wine playing a card game called Spit that we set the oven on fire in my parent's apartment. We were baking marijuana brownies at the time and the fact that Annie currently works at the Department of State and has random drug tests is what we both refer to as a slice of Irony Pie. I wish I could remember how to play Spit, it was a lot of fun, but see reference to marijuana above.
Annie and I spoke for a while and it felt good to talk to someone who wasn't related to me. She knew better than to give me the parental party line that I would meet another guy someday and would end up marrying him.
"Where are you now?" she asked. I could hear her inhaling deeply on a joint. She had once explained to me the five stages of grief and how you had to go through them when people you loved died. Scotty hadn't died, although I would have preferred that to the ending I got, but he was gone and it felt like a death. Annie, if you're reading this now, I have since learned that in my case, there's more like twenty-two stages of grief.
"In denial."
"Perfect, I can pack and meet you there in five minutes," she said coughing and laughing. God I miss pot.
Annie suggested I go out with a guy she dated from her high school days; just to take my mind off all the sugar.
"You don't have to marry him Z, and you don't even have to get engaged, ya know?"
So I went out with her ex, a Dartmouth grad who kept telling me I was pronouncing the word 'puerile' wrong. I have no idea why I was using that word on a date but I'm sure it had something to do with my parents using it first. The Dartmouth grad had become a mailman at the end of his senior year and that was the only thing we had in common, working with mail, but he at least got health benefits for his trouble.
By now I was at mile marker month number three with Scotty. That's where the beloved's image is fading to black and white and you start noticing that the other men on the planet are all in living color. So when The Mailman fell madly in love with me I slept with him. The sex was better than it was with Scotty. I wasn't sure why since I was hardly a connoisseur, but this time I sweated too.
With The Mailman, I didn't bring up marriage and I didn't talk about having a child and I did not say that I loved him because I didn't. When I looked back on it all, talking about having a child with Scotty was the first and last time I ever talked about having kids. The Mailman lasted two months and then I dumped him. I gave him the old "It's not you, it's me" speech, which is the biggest bullshit line you can ever give anyone. I'm standing there wearing Fabulous like it was a brand new chinchilla and giving you that line, so seriously, how could it be me? Really and truly, the only thing wrong with me is that I'm not happy with you. So obviously it's you.
And that's how I got over Scotty. THE FIRST LESSON OF LOVE: When you fall, or are pushed, off the mattress, get right back on again.
Recommended reading: The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides No matter what: Don't cut bangs.
END of CHAPTER 2 (to be continued) |
Suzy Soro
