Despite certain unhappy circumstances, it was good to catch up. We chatted for several hours, stayed well past Closed, and I left with a combination buzz of too much caffeine and a happy, near-feminist, Janis Joplin song-singing feeling.
At one point, a friend, who I shall call "A," mentioned how nice it is to have finally grown out of the phase in which we—young, female adults—feign interest in the interests of the opposite sex. We swapped horror stories of enduring their all-night video game parties for the "sake of love." I recalled nightmares from the golf course and tennis courts.
In my current relationship I am more than lucky. T is too clever to be deceived by any half-assed attempt at interest and wouldn't stand for it anyway.
It is now, though, that I will take a moment to recognize a few items that, at one point, I pretended to like in order to get a boy to like me. The years have melted off the yucky break-up fat and have left me with trinkets, memories, activities and snippets of excellent conversation pieces that I honestly do enjoy. Thank you, exes.
1. Jazz. Herbie Hancock, especially. But I took a liking to Bill Evans immediately.
2. Drums. After a slew of drummer boyfriends, I have acquired an uncanny amount of knowledge pertaining to the drums and drummers and little drummer boys. A warning: Drummers really like to talk about drumming.
3. Chuck Klosterman. I couldn't stand Chuck, but I really liked the guys who liked him. A few years ago, I met Chuck and explained that he was the reason I probably couldn't fall in love. He sat quietly and listened to my mini-tirade in the book-signing line. Next to his autograph in my copy of IV, he wrote "Your ex-boyfriends are cultural failures." I'm not entirely convinced of this anymore, considering my ex-boyfriends encouraged the exposure to jazz, non-fiction and music.
4. Politics. If you're not interested in every aspect of politics, don't date someone who wants to be a politician. It does, however, come in handy, when you can spout of information he has just told you at dinner parties with other politically savvy individuals. I must say, that when President Obama started his campaign, my forced exposure to the political world helped get me through the issues and get excited about the democracy.
5. Interesting meats. I had never tasted elk until I dated a hunter. I didn't really like at the time, but I got through dinner and the awkward conversations with his parents. In retrospect, I probably didn't like it because I thought elk were cute. But I could have been ahead of the times! In the environmentally conscious world, trying new protein, especially local meats such as bison, is like, the new black.
6. Disc-Jockeying. Or spinning. I heard a lot of music. The problem was, he only wanted to talk about music. He did have some great screenprints, though. Now I have an excellent collection of electronic music mixtapes he made. I am the life of the party, or I was until he quit making them and the music on the tapes went out of vogue.
Anyway, just a few things I've remembered in the past day or so. Have you adopted any of your ex's favorites?
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