At first, I loved Dan from a distance. Judging on a bell-curve, I was attractive for my high school debate team, but otherwise, I was far from his type of girl. And yet, that one day on the quad, he saw me, sat next to me, picked me. Few get to date that one person they deify, the person they hold above all others.
I never thought I’d get over him. I was sure we’d marry, have vision-impaired children, and one day, I hoped, stop hurting each other.
After promising never to speak to each other again (no, but really this time), I contacted him for this interview.
***
Dan: You know, we did a decent job of not talking for a long time, so I hope this doesn’t ruin our record.
Elissa: This doesn’t count. Shall we begin? I have lots of questions stored up for you.
Dan: Yes, but I am nervous. To be honest, I am a little worried that I won’t be able to perform to your expectations…
Elissa: Dan, you fail to perform to my expectations every time. So, take comfort that it’ll be my expectation.
Dan: That reminds me…I left my phone out on the table at one point at some party, or someone was looking through the pictures I have stored on it, and they held it out to me, “Hey, you just got a text message from someone named…Garbage.”
“Oh, that’s just Elissa. What did it say?”
Elissa: I guess this interview has started. One thing I’d like to say is that I hate you the most for corrupting my grammar. You know about our inside joke of making fun of people who don’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re” by intentionally misusing them? Now, because of you, I mix them up unintentionally. It’s made me a nicer person though. And my pool for dating has widened.
Dan: So you’re settling?
Elissa: Or having different priorities.
Dan: [I’m editing a paper and this kid], in the same sentence, confused tactical with tactful. And intimidate with intimate…
Elissa: Same in my book.
Elissa: Ha! Since I turned 22, I’ve become less of a virgin.
Dan: Oh. Well. I fucked up fewer/less the other day.
Elissa: I sent a professional email saying “their” instead of “they’re.”
Dan: NO. Really?
Elissa: Yes. Yes! I swore never to tell you.
Dan: I am glad that you swore to never tell me. Historically, any promise made between us is a sure failure.
Elissa: Dan, I promise we’ll never not love each other again. Oh wait, you never loved me in the first place…which is something I would like to address.
Dan: I don’t know why I didn’t love you. I just…didn’t.
Elissa: Is this why we never had sex? Or was that because I was crazy?
Dan: I mean…
Elissa: You made me that way? Correct.
Dan: We didn’t have sex because it was clearly a trap. When you were a virgin, it was a mega-trap.
Elissa: Not if you actually cared about me, but your logic is your logic.
Dan: And you might be thinking, “The second mouse gets the cheese.”
Elissa: Definitely not thinking that.
Dan: This is all related to the love thing. Despite everything that I have put you through, it was just not ok to have sex without actually caring for you, caring about you, and loving you in the way that I should have. It seems like a double standard, to sleep with some idiot chick, and then refuse to sleep with someone who’s actually a real and great person, where there is a lot of chemistry and feeling. But viewed through my eyes, there was too much on the table with you. The stakes going into the bedroom were too high.
Elissa: So why not make it all easier by just being in love with me?
Dan: Some of it might have to do with the circumstances surrounding the first time we hung out, specifically that crazy bitch who came up and started yelling [Ed. note: on our first “date,” a hurt young woman interrupted what would be our first kiss by yelling, “Fuck you, Dan! Fuck you for fucking me and never calling!”].
Elissa: I think that’s a copout.
Dan: Regardless, things didn’t really get started on the right foot. The embodiment of our relationship would have been a horrible dancer, with two left feet. Anyway, I really don’t know why I never loved you. I think you pissed me off too much. For example, when I first met you, you prided yourself on being really good at flirting. Only…you weren’t good at it. That’s annoying.
Elissa: No way! I am super good at it!
Dan: What you considered flirting seemed to be confused with touching and overt(ly naïve) innuendo. Although, your flirting provided a nice counterbalance to your attractive traits.
Elissa: This clarifies a lot about my life in general. What if maybe you never loved me because we never lived in the same city for more than three months? Because that’s something I like to tell myself.
Dan: That could also have to do with it. I also think that flirting with you sometimes felt like playing with a puppy. Lots of energy without any particular direction, light wrestling, and you’d have no idea what to do with the stick if I threw it for you.
Elissa: I’d know what to do with the stick—
Dan: No, you wouldn’t. I felt old around you. I felt like I did drugs. I felt like a person who got drunk. I felt like an Adult. The problem was that I said shit like, “I won’t sleep with you.” This is maybe important because right then, you are freely allowed to compare yourself with other girls that I HAD slept with.
Elissa: I will forever hate those women. Also, this only explains the first few months of knowing each other.
Dan: Yeah, but every time after that, it was the same conversation over and over, only with another story added to the shoddy foundation. Not being in the same state sucked. Not being in the same grade sucked.
Elissa: Here’s where I am/was coming from: everything you’re saying revolves around your thoughts. According to Zen philosophy and my many years of therapy, thoughts aren’t “real.” All this information is new to me. Maybe not the first time you dumped me or the second or the third, but maybe before the fifth, I thought we could get over the past and be in a relationship based on the facts: chemistry, sexual tension, and Judaism. On paper, we were perfect for each other. And you’re only six months older than I am in real life.
Dan: I think you need to include grammar among the “facts.”
Elissa: I’m continually perplexed as to why you kept talking to me, for what turns out to be nearly five years. That fact alone made me think you loved me, or could love me, circumstances permitting. I wish you’d just cut me off the first time. Because I spent years, actual years, crying tears, actual tears, over you. Like the innocent girl you thought I was, I loved you innocently and deeply and fantastically. You knew this. And you knew how much pain I was in. And you let it go on. I thought that was you loving me. I was always begging you to let me give you a blow job because I was sure you’d love me soon enough.
Dan: And eventually, I came to love the blow job you gave me.
Elissa: As a feminist, this is all the stuff I’m against, how I turned against myself. There’s the idea that being in love makes you a better person; then there’s “I want you to be a better person, and then I’ll love you”; or, worse, thinking “I need to be a better person so then you’ll love me.” You helped me destroy me.
Dan: No, see, I disagree. No one you care about was strong from the start. No one made it through life without learning along the way. Do you think there is any room for a reinterpretation of destroy as galvanize?
Elissa: You can’t honestly think letting me give you a blow job and then handing me my coat two hours later, WITHOUT CUDDLING, is just you throwing me some hard knocks to be a better person.
Dan: Hey, you’re not the only one with regrets.
Elissa: Oh.
Dan: Also, you consistently freaked me out. And trying to gauge whether or not I was freaked out also freaked me out, in a really solid cycle.
Elissa: Oh.
Dan: Here is the thing: Everything that I have ever said or written to you about our past, and why we never fell into our destined love was, and will continue to be, speculation and theorizing. But I think the hurtful part of it is that I have never consciously been searching for an explanation that satisfies me. I have been rolling these ideas around and around through so many painstaking iterations with you to see if there is one that will ever satisfy you. Human behavior — you and I are no exceptions here — is too obnoxiously complicated to explain with simple energetic conservation equations or a set of rules of conduct. So I don’t know why I never loved you. I know why I never slept with you: it was a bad idea. And I know I always liked you. Even when I hated you, I liked you, and I still do. What’s there not to like? Seriously, what is there not to like? So chalk our failure up to timing, distance, me, my penis, you, your hymen, our history, or anything else. I think it’s probably all those things and none of them, which is SO FUCKING ANNOYING to write and actually mean.
Elissa: This is the first time you’ve moved me to tears without “I hate you and your stupid vagina” running between the lines.
Dan: That was some sort of horrifying catharsis for me, and I am sorry.
Elissa: What if we’ve had two separate relationships, and in the relationship I thought we had, I thought you needed to apologize, and I needed to forgive you and feel genuine release and understanding and transcendence? What if in my version of the relationship, all that just happened? I think we both know I constructed an elaborate fantasy love with you, á la Gatsby. You are Daisy. I fed our “love” all the time, decking it out with every feather you floated my way. So when you say you didn’t love me, I understand that on many levels. Because as much as I thought I loved you, I didn’t. Couldn’t. Because it wouldn’t be loving “you” but a made-up you. And sometimes we played equal parts in the fantasy, and you just balked when it got real. While you saw yourself as an Adult, I saw you as an Ideal. I often think I’ll never feel the way about anyone like I felt about you. And that’s probably true because you existed in my head. But it’s also probably true because it’s true.
Dan: Do you think we ever came close to understanding each other?
Elissa: Not even close until now, years later. This is something I suggest all people do with their exes: conduct a professional interview about why it all fell apart.
Dan: There are a lot of things that I learned from you.
Elissa: “Don’t date crazies.”
Dan: More like, the hubris to really truly believe that you will change the world in the way that you dream (also, having those ambitions in the first place) is a very, very important quality. Have we hit 650 words yet, by the way? [Ed. note: our original interview is over 6,000 words.]
Elissa: I have one final interview question for you. It’s two parts. 1) Why did you shower with my best friend? and 2) How could you not anticipate at the time of said shower that she and I would become best friends one year later and that you and I would date in the future and that I would be the type of person who would obsess over the whole situation for years to come?
Dan: I decline this question on the grounds that it is too hilarious.
Elissa: Fine. Do you think now maybe we can be normal to each other? Or is that too much to hope?
Dan: That is maybe the funniest thing you have said all night. It’s not too much to hope, but let’s not be too ambitious.
**
Original art by Ilyse Magy.
44 responses
I have a strong urge to send this to a couple of my exes as some sort of proof that I am not in fact crazy. Not that I think you’re crazier than I am, Elissa! It’s more of an “I’m not the only one” thing. (Note: I tried to insert grammatical errors into this comment on purpose in order to be hilarious, but the thought that someone might not get the joke and think I really didn’t know the difference between your and you’re was just too unbearable.)
Elissa, you accidentally published this online.
you knock me out elissa, once again.
Brilliantly awesome.
This premise, “after promising never to speak to each other again (no, but really this time), I contacted him for this interview,” made me laugh out loud.
Elissa, you accidentally published this online.
In Anthony Powell’s “A Dance to the Music of Time” (vol. 3, p. 79), the narrator slips his hand under the arm of the married woman he loves and has just hooked up with. “She pressed down upon it, giving me a sense of being infinitely near to her; an assurance that all would be well. There is always real and an imaginary person you are in love with; sometimes you love one best, sometimes the other. At that moment it was the real one I loved.”
It sounds like Elissa loved/loves the imaginary Dan and Dan liked/likes the real Elissa. But what do we know!
Thanks for the article.
“always a real and an imaginary”
Damion, I love, love, love that.
Here’s another quotation I think applies:
“She lived in a frame of men’s reactions, building herself over from one man to the next; her character seemed compounded by what various men had told her she was.†–The Unpossessed, a novel about the feminist intellectual by Tess Slesinger
Damion, I’m going to send that quote to my ex-girlfriend. Whatever happens is your fault.
Merit badges for bravery to both of you.
i think if the guy had slept with you it would have been less mean than all this mindfucking. i found this very interesting but also depressing.
“I’m continually perplexed as to why you kept talking to me, for what turns out to be nearly five years. That fact alone made me think you loved me, or could love me, circumstances permitting. I wish you’d just cut me off the first time.”
Fuck.
Turns out I’m a Jewish girl.
damn… feeling sorry for “the world”… why do people string people along? what do yall think is worse, stringing someone along with the hope that it’ll become something, or stringing someone along in an actual relationship? i’ve done the latter but not the former, or only very briefly, nothing like this epic 5-year thing.
Elissa, you accidentally published this online.
This piece is bizarre and shocking, several hours later I’m still thinking about it and wondering how impressed by/ scared for Elissa I should be. The line between bravery and stupidity (or, in this case, self-humiliation) is a mysterious one. Comedians I gather are all about it–walking it like a tightrope, leaping from it too.
Uh, here’s to working without a net? Uh, good job?
“Do you think there is any room for a reinterpretation of destroy as galvanize?”
Oh, that’s cute, Dan. You are clearly one smart and interesting dude, and props for that bro, but I don’t think you should congratulate yourself for giving a woman the opportunity to recover from the destruction that you wrought in her life.
I enjoyed reading this interview. I don’t think I’m Elissa or Dan, and I don’t think this is humiliating at all–it seems like a real thing that could happen to other people. I wouldn’t have the patience for five year anything; that’s my time-at-one-job world’s record. I feel like it is a different age group of people who would do this, and my first reaction is to tell young people, please don’t take your penis or vagina so seriously. Everybody thinks too much, perhaps except those who pride themselves on not thinking, but therumpus readers probably all do. Please be safe, use a condom and don’t put yourself in too many damaging and dangerous places, young person, but if there is a chance you will suffer five years about sex or virginity, anything like that, I really think you should go and fuck right now. Someone who seems nice, doesn’t matter who,really, don’t even ask their name, get to fuckin’, get that off your “to do” list and move on to your happy life. I’m more like the person who wrote “Every Guy I Had Sex With” so I could not relate to Elissa and Dan’s experience. Thank you, though; very nicely done!
Wow, this is hands down one of the best short piece I’ve read on the rumpus. Bravo Ms. Bassist. The line between comedy, pathos and transcendence is so thin, and this ‘piece’ really hits all the spots for me. I can’t help but think that Dan was and is a dick for being so self-centered, but he’s also genuinely hurt and confused; Holy subjectivity! I wish it was longer; I wonder if the quality would drop.
I almost did some kind of parallel Elissa impression at age 22, so thank also for the cautionary tale. “Don’t love a person who doesn’t love you, but really likes you (enough to string you along indefinitely)!”
This article, and many of the comments, confirms something that I’ve always believed, “When it comes to men, a lot of women really are stupid.” Stop thinking about everything. Stop looking for meaning. It’s just life, everyone has one.
Elissa I feel so connected to you. Be grateful you never slept together…I wouldn’t let myself orgasm with my “Dan” as punishment (for both of us) and for fear of sliping into oblivion. Then 9 years later he emails me from his brother’s wedding to tell me, he can’t stop thinking of me and what we had. And that he’s still alone and happy.
Whoa…Elissa, this is some real shit. I love it; it made me laugh and cry and feel all conflicted inside. But after reading it a few times, I can’t help but feel like Dan needs a solid punch in the nuts… Even though he made some brilliant comments, the fact that he dragged you along for “nearly five years” is pretty cruel. One question I have for you (Elissa) is, what did you learn from him?
Bravo for your bravery, my dear, in posting this for the world to see.
I am dazzled and fascinated by this, Elissa. The set-up is funny and smart ass-y and I wondered at first about it being a teeny bit too cool, but you cut right to the heart and you got it and you delivered something intimate and vulnerable and unexpected and original and yet universal too. I’m impressed. I’m interested. Keep pushing, Elissa, as a woman and an artist. Thank you.
Also, bravo to Dan for daring to do this with you.
Christ, what an asshole.
This is fiction right? It’s like some Fight Club thing where Dan is actually you, too. Or is that two? To? Okay, he’s also you. . .
I misread “clarified” as “chafed” and this was more interesting to me. Moreover, thank you so much Damion for quoting Anthony Powell, who remains possibly my favorite author judged on the basis of sheer reading pleasure. It’s worth moving from the fictional X. Trapnel to Julian Maclaren-Ross, whom X was based on, particularly the novel “Of Love and Hunger,” better than most Patrick Hamilton for me.
I was secretly hoping the whole time that this was fiction. Holy shit, Elissa. I am you.
The fact of the matter is, (which it is ridiculous that no one sees) is that by not sleeping with her Dan showed the depth and breadth of his emotions and care for her. To miss this is to miss the whole story.
Seriously brilliant.
Loved this:
Dan: Yes, but I am nervous. To be honest, I am a little worried that I won’t be able to perform to your expectations…
Elissa: Dan, you fail to perform to my expectations every time. So, take comfort that it’ll be my expectation.
My favorite part of an amazing piece!
Courage.
Wow. Intimate, honest, funny, and all too identifiable. I have been on both sides of the stringing-along thing, and both are all but impossible to navigate. Between having real feelings for the other person, trying to take their feelings into account, trying to understand their actions, and trying to understand what you really want and need for yourself…it’s a tangled thing.
LOVE THIS. How did I miss it? Will now go about promoting it. Others need to read this.
Thanks, Elissa.
I was the stringer-alonger for a long time, and I think when I finally stopped the stringer-alonger bullshit and figured out relationships s are commitments rather than contracts, things improved dramatically with both parties. Once humbled, I asked my string-alongee if she could forgive me, and bless her heart, she didn’t have to count the positive versus negative text messages from me at the end of the day and decide if I hated her just a little or a lot.
Guys can be dicks. For the sake of brevity, I’ll blame the media.
Damion’s quote of Anthony Powell is very badass. Elissa, you’re interview is raw.
Oh, by the way, is it Elissa BASSist like the guitar player, or Elissa BaSIST, like, rhymes with assist? After that one issue of McSweeney’s where they published correct pronunciations of author names, I feel like it’s my duty to get it right.
Rhymes with assist. When I ran for student council in eighth grade, my speech ended: “I’m Elissa Bassist, and I’m here to assist…YOU.†I didn’t win.
Fantastic Elissa. Brilliant idea and perfectly carried out. Wonderful.
Being abruptly cut off can produce the same result as being strung along. It may even be worse. Because you don’t have anything directly from the person, you are left to deduce it for yourself. The process you describe here…
[As a feminist, this is all the stuff I’m against, how I turned against myself. There’s the idea that being in love makes you a better person; then there’s “I want you to be a better person, and then I’ll love youâ€; or, worse, thinking “I need to be a better person so then you’ll love me.†You helped me destroy me.]
…can take on extra soul-crushing force when you are left to determine for yourself why this person you loved suddenly could give a shit if they ever speak to you again.
This is depressing.
This is so interesting to me because when I was 19 and a virgin my boyfriend wouldn’t have sex with me, and I’m still not clear on why.
I believe it’s STOREY, not STORY.
Thanks, Elissa, for your sharp and charming work of fiction. The comments are also entertaining, though naive. No male took part in this clever, moving, thought-provoking “interview.” The proof? No man, besides Stephen, would have that much to say, much less write, in public.
I’ve mused on my own version of an exit interview with a 29-year-long ‘friendship’ but I don’t want it to be over so I see no exit in sight. And, if I sent this swell piece to him, as some commenters mentioned, he’d fulfill my expectations of him, nine days later, with a scant email: “cute. so how are you how’s things how’s stuff?”
Elissa — get to work adapting this into a 2-person, 2-chairs, bare-stage show:
Act I is your version of this interview as a Sit-down, eye-to-eye, connection;
Act II is his version of it– short and screamingly funny in being off-topic as he performs what he was doing while you had the interview as a Phone Call;
with the last 25% of the show being the way it “Really Happened”: in that amazing dialogue I know you can craft when the guy and the girl run into each other on the city street… and awkwardly try to have this closure, this understanding, this connection, right there… break our fucking hearts as we nod and laugh and tear up… until they go their own ways.
Get me when you need a fresh pair of eyes for your rough draft of (drum roll)~
TheRumpus.net and Paper Internets
presents
a GirlPie production
of
Elissa Bassist’s biting new comedy:
“THE EXIT INTERVIEW: a Conversation With My Ex”
…coming to a bookstore, nightclub, jazz stage, indie stage or wealthy friend’s patio near you…
Thanks, Stephen, for the point,
~GirlPie
so glad this was brought to my attention again by the daily email. just pure awesomeness.
Oh, I LOVE this, Elissa!
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