A Vignette of Exquisite Awfulness
Oh, God.

This whole thing, the protra-a-a-a-acted breakup, has been a hyperbolic, slow-mo nightmare, a caterwauling fall through a mineshaft of unpleasantness. Why couldn't it just have been, "Look, Doug, I don't love you anymore. I know yesterday we were madly in love, but today I feel differently. This is so over. Now, I have things to do. Please get out." Something neat, clean, sharp and crisp. Snappy!

But I'm taking so LONG to process everything, to realize what's going on. And then there were those indeteminate months where we tried to be friends. The net effect is that I'm sludging through new levels of dull pain like a little plastic fish in a ball of gel, or an old record playing at 16 RPM -- ooooohhhhhhh IIII gggeettttt iitttttt.....ooooooooouuuuuucccccccccccchhhhhhhhhh!!!

OK....stop it. It's time for someone. A rebound relationship. Something a bit shoddy, not well thought out, filled with rough sex on a worn, iron-frame bed. Nights spent staring at the ceiling. Cigarette smoke drifting out the open window, flickering blue light from a neon sign playing on the wall.

People who are heartbroken treat it as if it's the only time, or by far and dramatically the most tragic occurence to take place with anyone, anywhere, ever. But, really, it's a bit like vomiting, isn't it? Such a horrible thing, and yet rather banal, so terribly ordinary. And oh, there will be more of it to come, whether in a few years, a few months, or a few minutes.

Still, while one is wallowing—or crouching over the toilet, or what have you—the drama is absolutely exquisite, is it not? Every so often I step back from the bitter, nauseating misery and cluck admiringly -- LOOK what a masterwork I am creating here! How fabulous! I am a damn GENIUS! Oh -- but more black there, in that corner, something sort of purply, like a welt...