Single Girl Dating Diaries: The Breakup Shakedown

Things have dissolved between me and The Bartender.  It’s a story as old as the cliché itself. Girl meets boy, girl and boy have the potential to be serious, boy freaks out and runs, runs as fast as he can.  I raged at him as he sat there, breaking up with me. “You know this could be good, you know this could be good for a long long time, and you’re throwing it away.”

He sat there as impassive and mute as an Easter Island statue.

So what to do. Act as stupidly as possible, maybe? Alright, we can try that.

If you remember, he was my Bartender before he was my Boyfriend, and that he worked in my favorite dive bar too, before I had to sully it with the possibility of romance. So back I went, to prove to myself that I loved a cheap beer more than I loved him. I didn’t order from the bar, I talked only to my waitress, who probably knew we had gone to Splitsville by now. I played darts by myself, feeling his stubborn eyes watching me.

The crowd picked up as it got later, and I got drunker, and soon I wasn’t alone near the dart board.  I don’t even remember looking at him first, I just remember talking to him.

“You’re much, much too good at this game, did you know that?”
“I spend much, much too much time in here, that’s why.”
“That’s a lot of much-es.”

I laughed, nearly spilling a little beer on his shoe.  He took a quick step back.

“Hey, I’m Andrew. Can I get you another drink?”
“I’m Ingrid.”

It took him all of five minutes to make me laugh and get my name and buy me a drink. Closer to closing time we were out on the smoking patio, cracking up over a mutual love of a cult TV show, when I shivered a bit in the cold. He took off his red flannel shirt and put it around me.  I finally took a good look at him through fuzzy eyes.  He was pale, a bit  red-headed, sporting a fairly bushy beard. His blue eyes seemed kind.

Even as he was asking me if I wanted to go home with him.

A one night stand? Have I ever done this before? Not really. Can I do it now, how badly am I hurting?
Exactly how many STDs might I get?

I was asking myself these questions not that night, but early the next morning, as I tiptoed around his quiet, unfamiliar apartment, looking for my shoes.  I surveyed the landscape. Guitar in the corner, music magazines here and there. Oh. A musician. I’ve heard about dating musicians. Narcissists, all of them, declared one weeping friend of mine who had been burned too many times.

I quietly grabbed a bottle of water out of his fridge, picked up my purse, and started to seal the deal on this one-nighter by opening the front door, when he caught me.

“Were you really going to leave without saying anything?”

I turned and there he was in the living room doorway, now clad in an old t-shirt and some natty old boxers that had bananas all over them. I stared at the bananas and thought briefly of how this guy had made me grip the headboard last night as though my very being depended upon it. But wasn’t it just really really great f*ck you-break up-rebound sex? Isn’t that all it should be?  He’s not even your type!  He’s a pale ginger-y singer-songwriter with a Zach Galifinakis beard!

He’s still staring at you, Ingrid, say something.

“It…depends.”
“Depends? On?”
“What we’re having for breakfast, I guess.”

I shut the door. What the hell am I doing.

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Hit that comment box! Tell me a bit about one of your one night stands.  You’d do it again, or never again? Was it reckless and wrong or simply liberating?