Random Rim Jobs

On my fifth wedding anniversary my then-husband and I went to a very fancy restaurant for dinner.  The restaurant’s chef had been lauded in all the local and national food magazines and by word-of-mouth.  Part of that word-of-mouth was from a friend of ours (Well, mine now that we’re out the other end.) who had recently completed culinary school and who was working as a pastry chef in said fancy restaurant.  The meal wasn’t going to be inexpensive but it was our anniversary so we decided to go for not only the chef’s tasting menu but also the wine parings with each of the eight or so courses.

We dressed up.  I wore a vintage dress that was figure-flattering.  The Ex wore a button-down shirt and a tie and jacket – the same combination thereof he had worn to our wedding.  The jacket was still somewhat ill fitting, but not much can be expected from the young men’s equivalent of Express when pressed for time and money.

First we had a drink at the bar and then we were shown to our table in the plushly carpeted, heavy curtained, dimly lit room.  Once we settled into our seats we were brought a bottle of champagne along with a note.  The friend who worked at the restaurant – who was off that night – and his partner – with whom I’d gone to law school – had arranged for the champagne as an anniversary present, which was incredibly sweet.

With champagne flutes in hand our wait staff went to work telling us about our meals.  Though we had both ordered the chef’s tasting menu, our meals would be different from one another’s, as would our wine, since it was paired with our particular dishes.  I was very exited, and I liked that we would have the opportunity to taste twice as many dishes and wines since we could share.

I’m not sure exactly when it happened – if it was before the first course or between the first and second courses – but at the time there was no food on the table.  We were sipping our champagne.  We toasted.  We smiled.  He got a serious look on his face.

I don’t know what I expected.  I know I hoped for something along the lines of, “I hope we have five more wonderful years together,” or some other clichè bullshit.  If we weren’t blissfully married – and we were not, after all we’d been married for five years – then I thought the reason for the extravagant anniversary dinner was to acknowledge that there had been some good and some bad in the prior five years and to move forward in a positive fashion.

My then-husband and I had very different ideas of what it was to move forward in a positive fashion.  His idea was not to start anew with hope.  Or maybe he did think he was being hopeful when he said, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”  Then he said some other things that probably related to having once been so happy to be with me and those feelings fading over the years and wanting a fresh start, or something like that.

Truthfully, I didn’t hear much of anything beyond, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you,” and I’m not sure who at the receiving end of that sentence would.  I calmly placed my napkin on the table, got up, and walked away.

I went to the bathroom where I thought about how fucking much the meal was costing us – a meal that we couldn’t afford and that we wouldn’t have planned except for the “special” occasion that he ruined with his shitty timing – and how I wasn’t about to let the insensitive idiot put that money to waste.  I freshened up and returned to the table.

He told me he thought I had left.  Suddenly he was concerned about my feelings.  The rest of the several courses were tasty but icy, at least on my part.  We did not taste each other’s courses – I had no interest in sharing with him nor in asking him to share with me.

Since we had wine with each course, by the end of the meal I felt almost happy.  Well, my belly was full and my mind was intoxicated, both things that can feel like “happy” to someone who had no clue what she was feeling.  Was I supposed to “make” my husband fall in love with me again?  Life isn’t some fucking lame romantic comedy about how a couple can find love again.

So because I felt “happy” and because my then-husband didn’t want to be alone with me and hadn’t for some time – when we were home there was television and, except for that dinner, when we were out it was with a group – I agreed to go with him to meet up with some friends.  At a dive bar.  In the Tenderloin.

We had just dropped over $500 on what was supposed to be a romantic anniversary dinner but instead of spending some quality time together, he wanted to be around other people.  Even after we broke up he wouldn’t fucking admit that we did so much socializing for the last few years of our relationship so we didn’t have to deal one-on-one with each other.

Sure, we were close to the Tenderloin so it would be easy to take a walk, or to be fancy and hop in a cab considering our attire, to hang out with some mutual friends.  (“Friends” with whom I’ve had little to no contact since the final breakup.)  And it was our anniversary so I didn’t want to go home alone, something I would have had to do since he was set on going out.  So we went to the kind of Tenderloin dive bar that opens at 6am and has the kind of regulars that show up upon opening – daily.

I honestly don’t remember if it was that anniversary or the next one, or the next one, that a group of us ended up at our place after hours.  I remember anniversary toasts from our friends.  I remember a lot of drinking.  I remember a lot of years of avoiding any difficult conversations by being too busy, by there being too many people around, by drinking too much, by wanting to enjoy a fucking anniversary meal (which is not the place or time for a difficult conversation, something my dolt of an ex-husband probably still doesn’t realize).

I swear.  True story.