The Short Goodbye

The Short Goodbye

By now readers will be fairly acquainted with Hockey Mom, the youngest of the Sarandon sisters. I still like Hockey Mom despite the curious circumstances under which the relationship terminated.

You will recall that when I first met Hockey Mom, we were both separated and waiting for the paperwork on our divorces to get finalized. We flirted. We texted. We had fun conversing. The conversation paused for a while, but after our divorces were final, the conversation resumed with a vengeance. Pretty soon we were dating, and we did that with a vengeance, too. Seven times in ten days, including one day when she called me as I was returning from a business trip.

“Hi.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m sitting on the tarmac at the airport. I just landed.”

“I need to see you.”

“OK.”

“Now.”

“Oh. I’m on my way.”

Then on the 11^th day, I  got a long email. Very long.

In about 15 paragraphs, Hockey Mom told me how much she liked me but that she couldn’t see me anymore because her doctor said  I was ruining her health due to our frenetic relationship.

My response?

“Take care.”

Then came another 15-paragraph email saying she was sorry for dumping me.

My response?

“Good luck.”

I’m not sure why I derive such satisfaction from my short goodbyes. But I do. No lawyers. No courts. No child support. Just a simple goodbye. Ahhh. Even as I sit here writing this, several months removed from making the response, it gives me great satisfaction.

I was reminded of this story the other morning when an attractive woman I had been texting with told me that “it was obvious that our relationship was going nowhere” and she was going to start spending more time with YouTube instead of me.

My response?

“Hmmmm.”

I mean, what else does one say? This particular woman’s divorce wasn’t finalized either, and she had been going through the typical ups and downs of the process. One day she just had to meet me, the next day she would cancel. This pattern would repeat itself over and over. Meanwhile, I remained detached and just sort of went with it.

There was another woman whom I had been messaging with off and on for six months. We did meet once during this time frame, and while the date went OK, it was no great shakes. She was memorable because her photos were amazing, but in person, while I could see she looked largely the same, the attractiveness was gone. I’d never met anyone who was so photogenic and yet so skim milk in person.

Anyhoo, as the six-month period was coming to an end, we scheduled another date for a Saturday. We did this on a Tuesday. How do I remember all this in such detail? Because on Thursday I wrote and asked if we were still on for Saturday. “No,” she said, in the two days since we made our date for Saturday, she had “decided to give it a go” with some other guy.

My response?

“Bummer.”

Part of the reason I love my responses is because it shows how removed I am from the whole dating process. I’ve really learned to take it all with a grain of salt. Better yet, these women know how wordy and verbose I can be, so it’s only fitting that when they make bullshit moves like these that the best they earn in response is close to nothing from me.

It’s kind of Camusian, existential flipping of the bird.