Mono and Myspace

A tale of sorrow written during my illicit affair with the man who would become my husband.

To kick off the collection of confessions that is Tumultuous True Stories, I’mma hit y’all with “Mono and Myspace,” a short tale of sorrow and rage written while wine-drunk in the middle of the night in the Spring of 2007, during my six-week long illicit affair with the man who would become my husband.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be publishing nearly all of the pieces I wrote during this period.

If you’ve read my memoir Too Pretty To Be Good—and if ya haven’t, why the hell not? —then you know that I write a lot about writing in that book. Particularly—I write about the vignettes and poems I banged out during the heartbreaking weeks in which I was simultaneously falling for and losing the greatest love of my life.

“Mono and Myspace”—is one of those tear-stained, wine-wasted pieces.

Centering as it does on a drama that unfolded on MySpace, this piece is particularly millennial.

Note also that I mention getting my first cellphone. That’s right. At the time of writing this piece, people did not regularly own cellphones. 💀💀💀

Enjoy, and go forth knowing:

I’ve got hundreds, and I mean hundreds, of pages of this kind of writing: diary-esque confessions created primarily as a pressure valve for the pain I could not keep bottled.

I also have actual handwritten DIARY ENTRIES chronicling this affair, and in fact, chronicling my entire life. They are unhinged and problematic; therefore I will definitely share them here.

PS. Note the double-spaces after periods. That was the grammatical convention at the time.

PPS. Please subscribe, and homie, please pay the measly $9 a month, because you and I both know you’ve been enriching your life with my writing for free on the ‘gram for a decade now. It’d mean a lot for you to support my art.

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Mono and MySpace

He’s got mono, and now we can’t kiss anymore, and he’s leaving in a week and a half so it might as well be tomorrow that I write, He’s leaving tomorrow, he’s leaving tomorrow.  Before his diagnosis, I had already resolved not to kiss him, and my sister told me, consider it over.  And although I had planned to quit kissing him, I was momentarily devastated at the prospect of it really being over between us. 

I say that as if it ever began.  It didn’t.  

This one—only ends.

But what does it matter that it’s over?  My friend tells me this mono is a cosmic signal, and I am never more tempted to entertain such bullshit as now, when once again the circumstances of my life reveal to me that plans mean nothing and there is no meaning.  I’d like to think, yeah, she’s right, this final biological attack on our pseudo-relationship is a clear portent of the universe telling me to stop.  Stop with him.  Every time we touch, it hurts.

My abdomen hurts.  Occasionally I’ve been vomiting.  My throat is not sore, but I was recently incapacitated with flu-like symptoms.  Did I give him mono?  I must have mono.  Just the other night, I had my tongue in his mouth so long that I forgot about the pies I was baking and burned them.  And now his throat is covered in white lesions.  I’m filled both with a stupid sadness—I guess we’ll never make out again—as well trepidation: fuck dude, I’m moving in a few weeks and I can’t deal with lesions.    

So this is what we’re leaving each other with: a sickness.

We used to have a joke about me being poisonous.

Once, he lost feeling in his finger for a week after a heated romantic encounter. Another time, he pulled a muscle in his tongue.  Back then it was fun to tell him, I’m poisonous.  It was: Good God we’re so fucking hot for each other that we’re hurting each other.  One of my favorite memories is when he shoved his heavy coffee table out of our way as we slid from the futon to the floor, his mouth locked on my throat. Violent. He’s the only man who’s ever bruised my lips. But now, when I tell him I’m poisonous and he agrees, it is not hot and it is not funny. Who are we to blame me? 

I tell him that I’ve got symptoms, and though it does seem logical that I would have mono, I admit that while I say this half of me means, You can still kiss me; I’m immune.

I’m immune.

I’m immune.

My last boyfriend told me goodbye for six straight months. I’ve had great practice at bracing myself.   

The day after he leaves for his real girlfriend, I drive across the country to my family and friends. I get a new car. I go to Atlanta. Find a new apartment for a single woman and two dogs.  Get a cell phone—so unlike me.  

So unlike me.

What will I do with my hair to erase this Spring?  

Tonight he’s feeling sick again. I leave him a comment on MySpace.

One of his female creative writing students’ final short story was a fairly blunt testament to his sensitive masculinity. She named his character Godric Matthews, and he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. The MySpace comment I leave him refers to the hotness of Godric Matthews, as well as his current unappealing lesions.  I was trying to be funny.

It is almost midnight when he calls. He sounds pissed. He tells me, I just want you to know I erased your comment.  He says, I don’t want my student to see your comment and know that I make fun of her to my jackass friends.

I say, I’m not your jackass friend.

I wish I didn’t feel so dizzy.

I want to thank him for being pissy with me. I want to thank him for leaving me. The first time I told him I loved him, he told me, There is no future in this. I don’t feel well. This isn’t fun anymore. Every time we touch, it hurts. I miss him. I think I miss him more now, with him just down the road, then I will when he’s hundreds of miles away. I want to thank him for hurting my feelings tonight. Erase my comment, jerk. Wasn’t that always the plan? Erase all of my comments and we’ll both become poisonous. I’m staring at a tidal wave. I am tired of holding my breath.  Just fucking hit—I hate the wait—and I’ll try to swim.

—LB, 2007

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Hey there, dear reader, have you ever had an affair? Have you ever fallen for someone you could not have? Have you ever masochistically slammed your tender heart against the jagged rock of an impossible love?

I know, I know. Immoral, blah blah blah. Let me just go ahead and advise you that the entirety of my life has been an immoral morass.

Now that we’ve got the self-flagellation taken care of, please;

Share your stories of illicit love in the comments.

I am a voyeur of the human soul. I will read your secrets voraciously.

If you ever wanted an audience, well—you got me.

And thanks, by the way, for being mine.

See you next week.

Love, Lindsay