I found Billy Breakdown online, and his profile screen-tested wonderfully: good-looking, avid marathoner, back in school for his second Master's (to become a counselor, after years of teaching), progressive, hints of witticism - seemed, well... together, life-wise. So I fired off a message and sat back to wait.
And wait.
Aaaand wait.
(I require faster-than-pneumonia response.)
See, here's something about online dating: it's really, really superficial. As such, though I know my profile itself won't be everyone's cup of tea (a lot of dudes see correct grammar and syntax as red-flags, apparently), I generally expect right around a 100% email response-rate, because:
a) I actually initiate contact with very, very few men online, and
b) I suspect most sites are pretty demographically male-heavy and so supply-and-demand factors into the equation in my favor, and
c) Pictures. Let's face it - we all just look at the pictures first. There, I said it. Hate if you want.
So, after around 72 hours of lag-time (which I spent alternately bitching to girlfriends about the insult/speculating with them whether Billy Breakdown had just probably died in the interim or something), I finally got a response and we set up a date, where it came out within the first ten minutes that Billy Breakdown's lack of communication was due to maybe the only other acceptable excuse, beyond aforementioned death: the fact that he was in jail when I wrote him.
(Well, for one, you piss off impatient Susies.)
Yes, jail. I won't go into the legal transgressions that landed him there, but it was a short little wrist-slap stint and he seemed genuinely contrite and I once chased after a twice-felon, so this really wasn't a big roadblock.
Billy Breakdown and I went out a few more times, and I finally invited him over to hang out at my place, where he could run the social gauntlet that is my current housemate, The Mover. I'll call him The Mover because he's a long-time friend (his origin story: he's Billy Builder's male BFF I met at a wedding Billy Builder and I attended) who's helped me move households and carried me home from bars more times than I care to count, over the years. I'm also going with The Mover because he's a great tool for weeding-out and moving-along Billys who just can't keep up with his humor. He's sharp but hilarious, delightfully evil but never mean-spirited, and will absolutely wit-bludgeon the poor soul who can't toss the ball back to him quickly enough. In short, as he's pretty much my brother (therefore disqualified from Billydom), he's just a perfect platonic match for me.
Unfortunately, The Mover was out that evening. So unencumbered, we had a few beers, played guitar and sang shitty songs for each other, laughed a lot, and eventually moved on to a light couch makeout. I should stress "light," because it completely took me by surprise when Billy Breakdown suddenly stopped the action, got a little sheepish, and demurred with a statement to the effect of "I'm sorry, I'm just so bad at this the first time around."
(Um, bad at what? We're not doing goddamn trigonometry here.)
I realized that Billy Breakdown must have assumed I'd invited him over with a plan for sex. Now, I'm a pretty liberated gal, and I do put off the vibe of a down-ass girl from time to time (though when I do it's completely intentional, not of the accidental-crossed-signals variety), but this was truly a surprise to me. I quickly made the situation even more awkward by spouting off a reassuring "Oh, nonononoNO, Billy, we're not fucking tonight," and there the pins landed. Or, for a more representative metaphor, there the ball hit the gutter and the entire bowling alley lost power and was plunged into darkness.
But, undaunted, Billy Breakdown popped up on my phone within a day to arrange another date, which went well enough that I again deigned him worthy of an encounter with The Mover. So off to my place we went.
This time around, The Mover was home, two whiskeys in, and in splendid form. I took a deep breath, mentally wished Billy Breakdown well, and turned him out into the
Of course, over the course of his trial-by-fire, we both had a few drinks, and when the witching hour approached (I work very, very early mornings in the summer), Billy Breakdown was a little too tipsy to drive home.
Fine. No problem. He's in, remember?
So I show Billy Breakdown to the couch and go upstairs, fully intending to be asleep within the quarter-hour, because Short-Of-Sleep Susie is a complete trainwreck, and he's already done the weird-about-physical-contact thing before so whatever, he can couch it until he's ready to drive, but I cannot stay up to entertain because grownuplife.
I go into my bathroom to brush my teeth.
I wash my face.
I do some other brief bathroom-mirror grooming.
I come out of my bathroom to find Billy Breakdown in my bed. Surprise, surprise.
("Surely, sir, you don't think you're the first guy on Earth to try to pull this - the cleverest of all moves?")
OK, pause. In all adult honesty, I'm not entirely opposed to him being there - I mean, in my bed at a time I am also about to be in my bed. The issue, right now, is that precious minutes of sleep are slipping through my clutches, and any sort of billyfoolery is surely going to take up far more of said minutes than I'm willing to part with tonight.
OK, play. I decide that fuck it, I'll just get in bed and we'll go to sleep and that's that. So I lie down, and turn off the light, and Billy Breakdown wants to kiss a little so I go in for like two lukewarm wife-has-a-headache-caliber kisses and then suddenly we are in another dimension. And this dimension involves Billy Breakdown leaping out of the bed onto the floor, and curling up, and crying. Cry-ing!
I don't have a problem with men and emotions, but seriously, what the FUCK. Lights-on, I see that Billy Breakdown, in the fetal position on my carpet, is really truly having a breakdown. Things that I now know are part of a breakdown include (but are possibly not limited to):
- Inconsolable tears
- Incoherent sob-words
- Covering of head with arms like they taught schoolkids to do for 1950's nuclear strike drills
- Rocking to and fro
- Cryface (mostly rubbing all over carpet, which Jee-zuhs, just... you know I have a dog, right, Billy?)
- Me, not able to go to sleep as planned because what the fucking fuck is happening here??
I mean, this is A New One of epic proportions. Has he been psychologically damaged by his humor death-match with The Mover? Has he suddenly been overcome with Catholic guilt over being in my bed, which is his own damn fault? Does he have some sort of real, honest-to-god repressed sexual issue he's reliving? Wait a minute. Waitwaitwait. What the fuck happened to Billy Breakdown in prison? (Or maybe, does he just lose his shit when he's too short on sleep, like I am about to fucking do right now/tomorrow?)
This the most incredible emotional implosion I've ever witnessed, and between the two of us, I'm not the one trained to deal with this sort of shit! (Remember, this guy is almost certified to be a counselor!) Honestly, it's like I'm not even interacting with an adult human being right now - he cannot communicate, he cannot move, he cannot do anything but, well... whatever he's doing on my carpet. And as such, I can't go to sleep, which starts to piss me off after about ten minutes. Finally, as he simply can't be allowed to continue to melt down all over my floor because there's no way I'll drift off peacefully with all that noise, I present him with an ultimatum:
"Billy, OK, you know what? You can either stop it and get in bed and go to sleep, or you have to leave."
(A dame's gotta get her sleep, ya hear now?)
***
I heard from Billy Breakdown once after The Incident, in the form of a text-bomb (so long it arrived broken into four separate texts) claiming that he didn't *really* remember the night, but was horribly embarrassed and blah blah blah apology hey do you wanna go out again? I didn't even know how to respond, so I never did. I just can't even.
A couple weeks later, reminiscing on the Billy Breakdown story and the general glory of my dating life with The Mover, I suddenly realized it was probably time to clear him off my Facebook. We logged on and looked for him, but turns out he had already not only unfriended me, but blocked me.
I can't help thinking that my being in the "blocked" category can likely be extrapolated to mean I've joined the ranks of whatever repressed memories of his will come spilling out of his tear-ducts again some unpredictable late night far in the future.
But it'll be onto some other unfortunate Susie's carpet.
And for everyone's sake, I sure hope she's down for an all-nighter.
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