The 100 Girls, 100 Days Project

Barbecue sauce. That is what initiated the demise of me and the ex. Of course it was symbolic barbecue sauce, but it was also barbecue sauce in the most literal of senses. Due to some familial obligations, we were spending time in my parent’s place, amidst my childhood pop-punk posters, when it hit us to get midnight Wendy’s. And off we went to the drive-thru.

We placed our orders and, as we are waiting for our burgers, she asks me to make sure they give us barbecue sauce, and I promptly tell them, and we drive off. Halfway home, when she finally checks the bag, she comes up empty handed.

Before I know it, she’s screaming at me about the barbecue sauce, and then it’s about more than the barbecue sauce. About how I’m inconsiderate, and selfish, and there’s a laundry list of things wrong with me. It wasn’t about how I paid for her food, it was about how I didn’t look in a paper bag for that oh so magical condiment.  I didn’t want to fight, so I just drove and tried to apologize.

Twenty minutes later, we are eating on my floor, watching Seinfeld reruns and something in me just snaps. I hadn’t had a panic attack since sixth grade, but it was still all too familiar. And the more I thought about it, I knew it was all about her. I knew the barbecue sauce was the kindling I was waiting for to be finally, and completely, done with this relationship.

When she tried to put her hand on my back to call down the anxiety, it only made it worse. She wasn’t comforting, and it was more about how I didn’t really feel like spending another single sleepless night next to her. I worked up the nerve, and told her that I couldn’t do it anymore, and that we brought out bad parts of one another.

I had perviiously said these words to her, but she always managed to get me to calm down and take them back. But not this time. A panic attack is a pretty big thing when you haven’t had one in over ten years. After forty minutes of bearing witness to some intense crying and pleading, I took my father’s beat up old Accord and made our way to her rat-hole of a Williamsburg apartment. I may love living in the city, but I hate driving through it, but I was determined.

The car ride was soundtracked by apologies, crying, and deafening silence. She put my iPod on, and I immediately shut it off. I have soundtracks to everything: first dates, long, sweet sex, cold, detached fucking, making a girl dinner, road trips, seasons, job interviews, anything. But I knew whatever album she put on would be ruined, and be a constant reminder of that bad Brooklyn drive.

Arriving at her apartment, we sat in silence. In my head I was building it up to be this epic and sad moment, but it was just a minute of sitting there, and she asked me for a hug. I gave it to her, and it was the most detached, out of body hug  I’d ever experienced. Distant aunts don’t even get these bad of hugs from me.  She told me she loved me, and I said nothing. As she got out of my car, part of me wanted to get out, call her name, and give her that long last kiss. But the words didn’t come and I sat there taking a long, hard look at myself, and the fact that I wasn’t feeling much of anything. I looked at her vacant door, and fumbled through the side compartment to see if there were any remnants of my father’s smoking, to no avail. I put on Ryan Adam’s Heartbreaker on the way home and just took in the lights of a stirring Manhattan as I drove down the BQE.