Ricky, B, and Me, (Conclusion) by Paul Shirley

Published: December 16, 2009Posted in: Paul Shirley
Ricky, B, and Me, (Conclusion) by Paul Shirley

This is the second half of a story I told my friend Neil, when he expressed misgivings about the state of things between him and his girlfriend, who lives far, far away. For the first half, click here.

As I mentioned, B had jumped into our relationship soon after the end of another. But that relationship wasn’t just any relationship – she and the German pilot had been together for 6 years. He’d been her first real boyfriend. They’d lived together most of that time, making them more like a married couple than like two kids dating.

B’s inability to stop comparing our relationship to theirs was a constant sticking point for us. She would occasionally mention how happy she’d been back then, and had wondered aloud if I could ever compare to her ex. (This happened in our tiny apartment in Barcelona. She said, verbatim: “I don’t know if you’ll ever compare to my ex.”) Should I have left? Probably. But I felt handcuffed by my location and the difficulty of leaving the city. And I thought these things would pass, eventually, and chalked up my own childlike devotion to the feeling of “if not now, when?” It didn’t seem like we’d get another chance at this relationship; it’s not like we lived in the same city normally. Or the same country. Or on the same continent.

With me in Kansas, and her back in Europe, B was invited to a wedding in Germany that was to take place in early June. The ceremony involved a friend from her old life with her ex-boyfriend, but he wouldn’t be in attendance. When I found out that the wedding was only a week before I was supposed to go to Germany to meet her, I told her that I would be willing to come early so that we could go to the wedding together. Despite all my travels, I’ve never been to Germany. I thought any excuse to see Munich would be a good one.

At first, she said no, she didn’t want me to come. Initially, I took the rejection in stride, wanting to think about it before reacting. (A lesson in long-distance relationships: Flying off the handle rarely works. It takes a long time to talk your way back.) But after a day, I told her that I thought it was odd that she didn’t want me to come to the wedding. I said that, in my experience, people with boyfriends and girlfriends generally want to show them off. Not because they’re trophies, but because they’re happy that they’ve found someone this particular singular human being and want everyone to know it.

She agreed. Yes, she’d been stupid to tell me that she didn’t want me there, she said. She apologized, and it was set – I would go to the wedding with her in Germany, and then we’d stay in that country for a few weeks while she took modeling jobs.

Around the same time, B returned to Barcelona. She’d hoped to stay out of the city because too many memories were attached to it, but it was simply too easy to work there. Her agency was in Barcelona and she was a known quantity to firms willing to hire. In addition, the economy in Europe was in terrible shape and the modeling industry isn’t exactly a vital one.

She was again staying with a friend, which was undoubtedly taxing. Her future remained shrouded in mystery, which was stressful. In addition, she was taking classes in an attempt to finish a business degree in tourism. And her boyfriend was American. Her life wasn’t going exactly as she had envisioned.

Because she was in Barcelona, she clung to any friends she had. One of them was Ricky. Now estranged from the Polish girlfriend, Ricky had plenty of time for B. He took her to lunch, he took her to clubs late at night, he was consistently available for chats. In other words, he was a stand-in boyfriend.

Despite my earlier, magnanimous feeling of trust for Ricky, I was beginning to be suspicious. I asked B about the situation, saying that I was trying not to be jealous, but that her near-daily contact with Ricky me uncomfortable, especially because Ricky was buying the lunches and making the going-out plans. I didn’t know him THAT well, after all. And in my experience, the typical male won’t devote so much energy to a particular woman unless he’s gunning for symbiotic nakedness surrounded by a bouquet of torn-open condom wrappers.

You should be thanking him, Paul, she said one day, rather nastily. He’s the only one that sticks up for you. Most of my friends think you’re not right for me anyway. They think I need someone more like my ex – someone who is a part of higher circles.

I should mention that her ex’s father had been a VP at a Hilton or Sheraton or some far-reaching hotel chain. So, in addition to the ex’s connections at Lufthansa (he and B could fly anywhere in the world, almost anytime they wanted) and his father’s connections at resorts (they could stay anywhere in the world, almost anytime they wanted) and the fact that all of these people were conspicuously wealthy (and I am not), her life had been a more luxurious one before I came along. As she was beginning to say, with more and more frequency.

(This, of course, begs the question, “Paul, were you making her work in the mines when you were around?” I was not, although I did often ask her to flush the toilet after herself.)

To summarize, and to understate matters: Things between B and I were not going well.

My plea to B was that, if everything were “normal” – if she and I were in the same city, and she wanted to hang out with her friend Ricky every once in a while – I wouldn’t have any problem. But considering the pressure we were under, thanks to the physical distance between us, it didn’t seem like a good idea for her to see him all the time.

She said that Ricky was a gentleman and that, as long as she was with me, he wouldn’t try anything. Ricky himself echoed her sentiments. We were still in touch, chatting occasionally on Skype. He’d say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with B, Paul. I always tell her you two are perfect for each other. It seems like she just gets crazy sometimes.”

Tell me about it, Ricky.

Soon, B decided that she didn’t want me at the wedding after all. She was afraid I would embarrass her because she wasn’t sure I was well-mannered enough for such an occasion. “You might say something that will offend someone, or you won’t know which silverware is which, or you won’t dress the right way.”

This came on the heels of a comment she had once made about my friends, saying that she thought my friends were on a lower level than hers.

And then, the last straw. She said, about the wedding, “Well, if you could just be more like Ricky, then I could probably take you.”

Which is not the right thing to say. Not to me, not to anyone.

But I didn’t break up with her. I got mad and said, sitting in the Denver airport, waiting for my brother to pick me up for my visit, on a call that was going to ruin my cellular phone bill for the umpteenth time in a row, that she needed to decide if she wanted to be with someone like me, because someone like me is exactly who I am.

Soon after, she called to apologize, saying that she’d said terrible, terrible things and that she was sorry. She wanted me to come to the wedding – wanted very badly for me to come – and admitted that the last weeks had been hard for her, but that she knew we could get through a few more and then be together. At that point, everything would be okay, she said.

Two days later, she called and broke up with me. In her rejection speech, she told me that she’d decided that I wasn’t right for her and that she needed to have someone more like her ex. She said that she wanted to take a lot of time for herself; that she was looking forward to being single for a year, or maybe two, because the last years had been hard on her and she needed to figure out her life.

I was very, very sad. I had put significantly more into our 18-month relationship than she had, but had failed all the same. The two months prior to the end hadn’t been fun and, had they continued, I probably would have lasted only another month. But, I felt betrayed. I’d been betting on the come, as it were. Hoping that B would eventually shake off the pessimism that seemed to envelope her periodically and that we’d survive. I thought there was enough inside her to fight for, and at that point, wasn’t willing to give up.

And so I cried a lot.

A week later, as I was beginning to come out of my doldrums, I got a strange myspace message. Strange because it was myspace and even then, no one used it anymore, but stranger still for what it said.

It came from a picture-less profile of a person who called him- or herself Lalo Lolo. The person had no other “friends”, and conceivably, had created a profile only to send me this message:

Paul-

you do not feel bad! , your love is poorly matched..
she is with Ricky…they are in love.
MJ

Good luck!

Desperate for information, I tore off a response:

Can you give me a little more? Who are you?
(Not saying that in an accusatory tone – just not sure who MJ is…)
Thanks for the note, either way.
And Ricky, really?

Paul

Lalo Lolo said, only:

Yes…

And then I was even more sad. Not only had I been betrayed on the love front, I had apparently been betrayed on the friendship front. For several days, the confusion ate at me. I didn’t know if I should be mad, or if I should even care. So what if Ricky was with her? I thought. I’m not, and that’s all that matters. But, my sneaking suspicion was that, if it was true, I might feel a lot better about myself. B’s actions would then be so unforgiveable, so reprehensible, that I wouldn’t be left wondering what might have been because I’d be glad I wasn’t with someone who could do such a thing.

I contemplated my options. I could call B, but it seemed unlikely that she would tell the truth, if only because she would feel bad about further hurting my feelings. I could press Lalo Lolo for more details, but that well seemed dry. The only option left was to call Ricky.

So, one early summer afternoon, I did.

I could tell when he answered that it was true. I had caught him unawares, and he fumbled for words when I stated, calmly, that I had gotten a strange email and wanted, from man to man, to know the truth: Was he dating my now ex-girlfriend, only days after she had told me she didn’t want me anymore?

He sighed and said, in that weird accent of his, “Yes, Paul. It’s true. I wanted to call and tell you, but I didn’t know what to say.”

I sighed too, and then toughened. I felt like someone from a movie when I said, “Ricky, I’ve been hearing a lot – during my whole relationship, in fact – about how much better Europeans are than Americans. And about how inferior my friends are. But let me tell you something about friendship in America: We don’t do shit like this to our friends.”

“Yes, Paul, I’ve failed you as a friend.”

I’ll say.

He said he was sorry again, and told me how, a few days after B and I had broken up, they’d been together, he’d looked into her eyes, and he’d realized he was in love. She had said she felt some of the same things, and they were going to give it a try.

So I booked another ticket to Barcelona, bought a chainsaw, tied them back-to-back to a chair and…

Or,

I said, “Okay, man. I’m not going to say ‘Good luck’. I’m just going to say, ‘Goodbye’. Forever.”

Seriously. I actually did say that. I’m never that definitive. But I was at rock bottom.

When I hung up the phone, I deleted everyone who had ever been associated with B from my various social media. (The 21st century version of a hateful letter.) A few days later, B called twice and left a message, saying she wanted to talk to me. Then she sent an email, noting that I’d been a better poker player than I’d ever let on. She thought I’d bluffed my way to the answer from Ricky. Little did she know about the leak in her administration.

I emailed back to say that I didn’t think I could talk about the situation and that it would be best if we didn’t have contact.

I’ve never learned the identity of Lolo Lola. I assume it was one of the friends of B’s that I met during one of our stays in that city. Someone with a shred of compassion. Someone unlike B and Ricky.

The blame for the outcome does not rest entirely with B and Ricky, though. Some of my heartbreak was my responsibility too. I learned a lot from a long, intense, and, ultimately, fatally flawed relationship. I learned that I should have stuck up for myself, that I shouldn’t have thought I could fix everything, that endurance isn’t necessarily a positive virtue.

And I learned that single males will only stay your friend as long as they aren’t left alone with your girlfriend in a city that’s thousands of miles away.

Back in my basement, with college football in the background and a long, sad story in the air between Neil and me, I took a sip of my beer before turning to him to tell him what I thought about his situation. I wanted to say that everything would be okay, that trust is the only solution. But my experiences tell me otherwise. Now I know that, if it feels wrong, it probably is wrong.

So, to my friend Neil, I said, “Sorry, man. Sounds like you’re fucked.”

Because he probably is.