COLUMN: Post-Breakup Syndrome

From Rob Faunce's "Quoi d'ever," Fall '95 From Rob Faunce's "Quoi d'ever," Fall '95There are so many ways you can write a "breakup" column. There's the cloying, unrepenting sentimental column, where I weep inkblots on the page -- a tenth-grade journal entry for presentation to the masses. Those inkblots can get messy, though. Of course I could go with the "Don't cry for me, Penn gentina" concept, where I show my steely reserve and promise to hold my head high and never walk in anyone's shadow. However, my name is not Susan, and it's not Whitney Houston, either. No flaming displays of emotional strength today. Writing a column about a breakup is a Catch-22. Everyone does it but no one wants to hear about it, yet if you are the one in the breakup, you have no choice. It's all I can think about. He's all I hear. He's all I see. Every song on the radio has some memory of him. Even that damned Hootie and the Blowfish juggernaut has a nostalgic tinge or two associated with it (admittedly they are tinges of nausea). Classes are no consolation. Edith Wharton books tend not to be consolatory when the heroines kill themselves or leave the men to whom they are devoted. Human sexuality courses can be a bummer when the topic is love and your peers are obliviously prattling about their happy relationships. So you are inconsolable, and everyone claims to have been there. And that's where my breakup column becomes slightly different than the typical self-help psychobabble I've been expounding on. This is my new vigor for a tired genre! See, you may think you've walked the same roads I have been couched on. Well, you haven't been. Word association: think about gay men right now. You didn't picture happy couples going to Ikea, did you? Generally speaking, gay men tend not to spend long times in relationships. The stereotype dictates that "commitment" is staying for breakfast in the morning. When you think gay men, you think promiscuity. It seems that society has decided that gay men are destined to be promiscuous and noncommittal. And gay men have historically accepted that. The resulting cultures (both gay and straight) are intolerant of long-term gay relationships. When a couple lasts as long as Mike and I did (18 months), they are viewed as an anomaly. Neither gay nor straight friends alike know what to say to me. There are no real precedents of gay breakups in our small milieu. We can't make the standard comparison to heterocoupledom because gay men don't generally have to deal with the same traumas incurred by women dealing with straight men. And there are no gay men around who can sympathize and say, "Oh! I went through the same thing!" Because we are not supposed to be in relationships; we are supposed to be color coordinating the bathrooms on the way to go shopping with our female friends before hitting Woody's to find Mr. Tonight. So gay men tell you to move on (Standard advice: "If he does not realize what an individual you are, then tell him to just think again! Find yourself a new man who'll appreciate you!" Straight women cry with you (Standard advice: "Oh, Rob! It'll all work out. I don't know what to say. Let's go shopping later, okay?") And everyone else just shrugs. So I sit alone, trying to avoid Sarah McLachlan songs on the radio. Given enough shopping trips to Liberty Place and rounds of Sex on the Beach bought by a blond stranger who speaks no English, you can certainly forget. For a little while. The thing about the post-breakup period is that everything always comes back to him. I can complain about societal restrictions, well-meaning but ineffectual friends, Stanley Chodorow's wardrobe and numerous other perturbing details, but no quantity of words or light beer can make me forget. I miss him. Everything else seems secondary. I may not like to admit it, but I will survive this. I am going to harden my heart, fasten my boots and go back into the coal mines for another day of work. And as I traverse the long days and interminable nights alone, a waif-like voice stays with me. She asks a ghost, "Do you eat, sleep? Do you breathe me anymore?" and then he leaves me alone with her haunting voice. I watch too much VH-1.