By Sara Faith Alterman
You’re a weird person to love, I guess, or at least a weird person to write a love letter to. Wait, that ended with a preposition. A weird person to whom to write a love letter? A weird person to whom I am writing a love letter? Ugh. This is harder than our breakup. You’d appreciate this dilemma, though, because part of our initial attraction was a mutual affinity for grammatical excellence. Ah, nerd love.
We had a good thing, and we’re good people; but we weren’t good for each other. You’re a comedian whose professional identity relies on being in front of and with and around people, while I observe and then interview and then hide from people. (I’m hiding right now, sitting in a whiskey bar and pretending not to speak English well enough to understand the bartender’s snarky questions about whether or not I’m writing about him in my diary.) When we were together, you prioritized your career over everything — even me — even when your work comprised a shitty show in a shitty bar on a shitty Monday night. I get it now, but I didn’t then. No, then I was infuriated and intimidated by your unconditional dedication to comedy. You were a better artist than I was. You still are.
When we broke up, I had just paid our bill at the noodle restaurant, and you asked me if I ever wanted to get married — not to you, necessarily, but in general. I said yes, and then you began to fumble and mumble about how we didn’t want the same life and that we should get out of this before it was too painful. We walked back to your apartment — you still dumping, me still crying — and as we faced each other on the futon in your cramped basement living room and I begged you to reconsider, your phone rang. It was your friend, another comedian, and he had arrived to pick you up and drive you to a show.
And in the middle of breaking up with me, you left.
Later when the show was over, you called me for a ride, and I picked you up because I thought it meant that you wanted me after all, but no. You finished breaking up with me on the ride home. And when we got to your apartment for the second time that day, I parked my Honda CRV and stormed inside to collect all my stuff: a toothbrush, an old sweatshirt, and some DVDs, I think. I cursed and cried and vowed that, some day, you’d be sorry.
I don’t think you ever were.
But as it turns out, neither was I.
Because just a few weeks prior I’d bumped into a guy I’d gone to high school with. (With whom I’d gone to high school? Ah, fuck it.) We hadn’t known each other as kids, but thanks to social networking and general Internet stalking, we’d reconnected — or connected, I guess — and become pen pals, of sorts. When he and I had serendipitously crossed paths and shaken hands, our bodies exchanged sparks — real Hollywood shit. But I was with you, and I was loyal.
When you broke up with me, I was devastated, but I was single. And, having been moved by that handshake and the man attached to it, I called him. I mean, sure, I sat a reasonable amount of relationship shiva first, but when I phoned him, he answered on the first ring. And we went on an awkwardly charged date to an awkwardly lit pool hall.
And now he and I are married.
So this is a love letter to the ex-boyfriend who broke up with me.
If you hadn’t, I would have waited and sorted and sweated out our relationship, which would have eventually crumbled anyway because we were not a good “we.” And then I wouldn’t have been free to call and date and love the person who did want the same life as me, and who wanted us to share it.
It’s been about six years, and now you and I are friends. Your career is astronomical, and you deserve it. You’ve earned it. You’re on TV a lot, and my father still throws the remote control across the room every time he sees your face (sorry). But I am proud of you, and I love you in a very nostalgic but very genuine and grateful way. You taught me to fearlessly pursue my dreams and not to apologize for doing so. You taught me the importance of making the right choices for myself, even when they’re painful for the people involved.
Speaking of painful, I can’t deal with how cheesy this letter is becoming. Oh no. Can you end a sentence with “becoming?” I think I need another whiskey.
This story is part of our week-long feature, Love Letters to San Francisco’s Quirky Bits. Learn more about it here.
