“… I’m sorry it’s come down to this, there’s so much about you that I’m gonna miss …”
Things I should have said?
Who would believe that two minutes and just a couple of sentences could do so much damage that they ruined the better part of two decades and maybe had even more effect than that on my life?
And no, the words weren’t “This is a holdup.”
It happened in 1970, the year of my first real relationship with a woman. Her name was Shelley and we dated from December 1969 to the end of May 1970 when the school year ended and she had to return to her home in New England for the summer. I had to stick around because I had to go to summer school to reinstate myself as a student at George Washington University.
We wrote to each other pretty much every day during June and we talked on the phone once a week or so. Both of us were looking forward to her return in September.
The letters started petering out in early July and by the middle of the month she wasn’t writing or calling at all.
It hurt for a little while, but by the end of August I was over it. I had done well in summer school — a 3.5 GPA — and I was looking forward to the school year.
Then around September 10th, she called me. She said she had to come down in a few days for registration and then return home for a week before coming back for the school year. She asked if I could pick her up at the airport, and being a gentleman, I said yes.
We spent the afternoon registering for classes, including one in State and Local Government that we would take together. We went to dinner and then sat around talking. Most of our talk had been noncommittal, just conversational stuff. I wasn’t expecting anything more.
Then, out of the blue …
“Do you still love me, Michael?”
Without even thinking …
“Yes, I do.”
“That’s good, because I still love you.”
And just like that, my world was wonderful.
For one week.
During the week she returned home, her father had an unexpected career setback. On her first evening back,we went to dinner together and then sat in her dorm room talking afterward.
Then out of the blue …
“Michael, we have to break up.”
Without even thinking …
“All right.”
We talked for a few more minutes and then I got up to leave.
“I hope we can still be friends,” she said.
“Oh, sure. No problem,” I said, although I felt “let’s be friends” in this situation was the equivalent to “I hope you’ll never borther me again.”
“You’re taking this very well.”
Not really, but this was the first time I had been broken up with and I was dying inside. I was right in the middle of those two minutes I mentioned earlier. It was more than 25 years until George Strait would write “I Can Still Make Cheyenne,” but the lines at the beginning of this piece would have been perfect.
“I’m sorry it’s come down to this. There’s so much about you that I’m gonna miss.”
But I didn’t know what to say and I decided I had to be Bogart and let her know she could do what she wanted and it didn’t matter at all to me.
So without even thinking …
“It’s no big deal.”
She had a stunned look on her face. “I think it’s very sad.”
So the knockout punch …
“Maybe you’re taking yourself too seriously.”
I think a real knockout punch would have been less hurtful.
It was 30 years before we spoke again, and that was only for a minute at the 2000 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. She was a delegate, I was a journalist.
As it turned out, my motivation to get my life together died that night. I was out of school again by spring. It was seven years later before I was in school past the community college level, and a two-year degree was the best I ever completed. I got into minor legal trouble and made a perfectly disastrous marriage.
I don’t blame Shelley.
I never have. I even think that if I had been honest about my feelings instead of playing Bogart, we might have gotten back together. But I was 20 years old and my time with her was the only experience I had had in a relationship.
I started getting it together in my 30s, but a late start and the lack of a four-year degree probably limited me. I had a career just on the right side of mediocre, and my second marriage to a truly wonderful woman gave me a much better second half of my life than I really deserved.
What did I learn? Maybe to be honest about my feelings. Nicole and I have had a number of knockdown dragouts in our 29 years of marriage, but as close as we come to splitting up, we love each other enough that we step back.
Because with her, there really is so much about her that I would miss.
I was so lucky to have her as my happy ending.