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The Stories...
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Love Stinks. Sometimes we get dumped.
: submit your own
worst road trip ever
by Matthew
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I dated this girl in college, and for a couple years thereafter. For purposes of semi-anonymity, I'll call her "Awful." We had a lot in common, and I liked her very much. Unfortunately, lots of the things we had in common were faults. I think this is true of lots of young couples.
After we graduated, she moved to Chicago, and I moved to St. Louis. We saw each other on weekends only, every three weeks or so. I started being not very nice to her, which I still regret, but understand. (It's filed away with other life lessons like the one I learned from my childhood frog- and toad-killing rampages in the backyard. I wish I hadn't done these things, but what can you do? Stop killing toads, and try to be nicer to subsequent girls who let you take their shirts off.) Then she moved to New York.
I drove the rental truck! I, boyfriend, can be helpful! In spite of the fact that she was moving (still) further away, it was a fun and exciting project. I ate at least one Filet-O'Fish sandwich at every tollway rest area McDonald's between Chicago and New York. Filets-O’Fish are my road trip vice! McDonald’s should put tartar sauce on everything!
I'd never driven in Manhattan before, and this truck was approximately the size of three right whales lashed together, and half as maneuverable. I have yet to collect on the good karma I accrued while doing this favor.
After unloading hundreds of thousands of boxes (and having the cops called on us for bad parking on my part), we drove the truck from New York to her parents' house. For purposes of semi-anonymity, I will call their hometown "Cumberland, Rhode Island."
Her family was always very nice to me. So nice, in fact, that even now, years after the fact, I harbor suspicions about their true motives. We had a nice stay there, anyway, as always.
Upon returning to St. Louis, I started to make plans to move to New York. I had lots of good friends in the Midwest, though, and only one (Awful) out east, so I wasn't thrilled about the idea. I visited her a few times, but now I don't remember how many. Possibly three.
The last of these visits was my Worst Road Trip Ever:
I drove to New York from Michigan, where I'd been visiting my family. Awful and I had plans and tickets to see Billy Bragg, who we had already seen in St. Louis. On the day of the concert, though, she decided she had had just about enough of me, thank you very much. I made a scene, of course, being not very pleased with the new not-mutually-in-love arrangement, and wishing she had told me on the telephone, instead of making me drive halfway across the country to get dumped in person.
Neither of us was in the mood for socialist rock, so our concert tickets went to waste. If I’d had a shred of dignity, I’d have gotten in my pickup truck right then and driven home to St. Louis. Anyone who’s been dumped, though, knows that it is not a moment of great dignity, and so I can be forgiven for acquiescing to her request to be chauffeured to her parents’ home (in “Rhode Island”) for the weekend. Why not? I had hours of driving ahead of me. What’s eight more?
Along the way, I stopped for a Filet-O’Fish. I remember her trying to elicit some sympathy from me, since it was so hard for her to have to dump me. This struck me as somewhat akin to a trapper asking coyotes to feel sorry for him for having to see them with such pathetically mangled legs. I remember pulling back onto the highway, unwrapping the Filet while, incredibly, she offered me a final blowjob for old times’ sake. (More incredibly, I declined.)
My overnight stay at her parents’ house was bizarre. I probably seemed stoned. I was red-eyed, distracted, and had trouble answering their very straightforward questions – especially the one about why we hadn’t gone to the Billy Bragg concert.
“I thought you’d been looking forward to that!” they said. (They’re so nice; what are they up to? What do they want?)
“Just… didn’t feel like it, I guess,” we said.
The next day, I got up early, went for a jog (!), took a shower, got in my truck, and drove for hours and hours and hours from – oh, let’s call it “Cumberland, Rhode Island” back to St. Louis. It was a perfectly terrible drive. I listened to some really strange radio broadcasts along the way, including a pretty exciting minor league hockey game outside of Indianapolis.
In middle Illinois I had a digestive mishap that makes a pretty funny story for non-mixed company, the details of which I will spare you, except to say that it probably had something to do with my Filet-O’Fish binge.
About six months later I moved to New York, but that was two years ago, and I never see Awful anymore, though we have a few friends in common.
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