During the crash, we may experience some turbulence
I met her on the Internet part 1
She had emotional baggage. A lot of emotional baggage. She had more emotional baggage than the emotional baggage compartment of an emotional jumbo jet.
I was her lover, and I learned a valuable lesson: When you fly on Emotional Airlines, you never lose your emotional baggage. In fact, you usually end up with more.
* * *
We first met in Vancouver’s Stanley Park, after 12 days of e-flirting on a singles web site. I liked her. She was cute and intelligent (or intelligent and cute, if you prefer), with a charming laugh and a killer bod.
However, L (her real first initial) was seriously messed up. And for good reason. You know how the universe seems to have it out for certain people, and fucks them over their whole lives? She was one of these people.
Her childhood was about as shitty as they come—her father was a stern, unsympathetic fellow who thumped his Bible almost as hard as he thumped his wife and daughter. Her early adulthood wasn’t much better—she married young, to a husband who encouraged her to become a prostitute on weekends to supplement their income.
Now she was in her mid-20s, a straight-A student in college, separated from her husband and ricocheting from one dysfunctional relationship to the next. She was on the rebound from her last relationship, which had ended two months before, and living with her best friend, who she had hardly spoken to in months. Apparently her friend, an emerging bisexual, had talked L into a doomed love affair that had soured their friendship.
Thanks to all this and more, L had one of the most eccentric and contradictory personalities I’d ever encountered. For example, she was obsessed with personal hygiene. She shaved her entire body below the neck. She refused to use toilet paper, instead wiping her butt with wet wipes she carried in her purse.
Yet at the same time, her house was unbelievably squalid. Between L and her estranged best friend (who I never saw), they had eight cats, two ferrets, a guinea pig and a rabbit. Let me tell you, when you have eight cats, two ferrets, a guinea pig and a rabbit in a small house, you really have to clean once in a while. But she didn’t, because she and her friend were embroiled in a silent, passive-aggressive battle of domestic neglect. As a result, the place smelled eerily like eight cats, two ferrets, a guinea pig and a rabbit. There were clumps of hair so big they were almost cats themselves.
And then there were the fleas. They permeated the cats, the carpets and the furniture, and they were always jumping. When I sat down to eat, they would land in my food. Luckily, I kind of like fleas, so I was only mildly disgusted by this.
You know, as I write this now, I really have no fucking idea why I went out with this woman. She was clearly insane, and destined to become one of those crazy old ladies found dead in a house full of cat shit. But I did it, partly because I was idealistic, partly because she seemed to be a wonderful person in spite of the damage, and partly because I was lonely.
For the first few months, things were great. We shared a lot of good laughs, a lot of good companionship, and a lot of great sex. I picked thousands of fleas off her cats. Times were good. I think we were falling in love.
Then the darkness came.
She started to resent me because she felt I wasn’t committed enough to our relationship. Then she started to resent me even more because she wanted to find a sugar daddy to pay her rent, and I, surprisingly, didn’t approve.
And so it began. She had warned me of her modus operandi herself. She gets a new lover, it’s really great for a while, and then for whatever reason she gets angry or insecure in the relationship. Then she switches into attack mode, and plays destructive head games until the relationship lies in ruins.
The first thing to go was the sex. She claimed that she couldn’t do it because the pH balance of her vagina wasn’t quite right. To fix this problem, she drank cranberry juice. I can remember asking, “If that’s what you do to change the pH of your vagina, then what do you do to change the pH of your mouth!?” and pulling a goofy face. She was not amused. Which was a shame, because it was damn funny.
But that was just the beginning. She really wanted to hurt me. And so, she did the most hurtful thing imaginable.
She fucked another comedian.
Now, there are some things you just don’t do when you’re sleeping with a comic. The biggest no-no of all is sleeping with another comic. Especially one with a better act.
When she told me, I was crushed. She was as cold as ice. I cried. It was an appalling scene.
Incredibly, we didn’t break up at that point—don’t ask me why—but our demise was not far off. Soon after, a random event occurred that drove the final nail in the coffin. You know how I said the universe has it out for L? Well, this was one of those times.
One day when L was out, vandals broke into her house. They trashed the place, smashed the ferrets’ cage and left L’s bunny lying on her bed with a broken back. After the vandals left, the ferrets found the dying rabbit and mauled it. So L came home to find her house trashed, and her bunny with a broken back and its ears chewed off. It died in her arms as she gave her statement to the police.
Meanwhile, I was on my way back from Vancouver Island with an extremely thoughtful gift for L. She picked me up at the ferry terminal, but wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. So I lavishly presented her with my extremely thoughtful gift—a bag of lovely gnawing blocks for her bunny.
It didn’t have the desired effect.
From that moment on, L and I were officially moribund. A few days later I called her and said it was over. She laughed condescendingly and claimed she’d said the same thing weeks before. Which I suppose she did, in her language. At least we both felt like we’d dumped the other, which is always the best way to go.
* * *
It was over. Nature had run its course. Our turbulent flight on Emotional Airlines had reached its final destination, and as predicted, we each came away from the emotional baggage carousel with a little something extra.
Somewhere deep inside my psyche, there’s a little suitcase labeled “L.” And I’m sure that somewhere deep inside her psyche, there’s a little suitcase marked “Glen.”
Thank you for flying emotional airlines. The trip went about as well as we expected.
Next week: Cynical atheism meets wigged-out Christian fundamentalism in Judgment Date, part 2 of I met her on the Internet. Don’t miss it! •
Originally published in The Peak, February 19 2001. Due to an error it was titled “During the flight, we may experience some turbulence”.
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