The First Time Cal Tried to Breakup with Me
I remember the first time Cal tried to break up with me. He was such a snake about it. I still didn’t have a job and had stopped going to my classes but I’d gotten a little money from my mom and had a new apartment with roommates that didn’t hate me yet. Cal and I had been fighting some but he was still coming over most every night. We’d usually fall asleep in my bed before he’d get up to leave, at 11 o’clock or midnight.
“I have to go,” he’d say to me in the darkness, our warm bodies in the bed together.
“Stay,” I’d say. “Stay. You’re not a little boy who has to go home.”
“But I do,” he’d tell me. “I’d stay if I could, but…” We’d discussed it many times and he always said he had to get home, that his parents were expecting him, that he couldn’t leave his car on the street overnight, that he had to study, that he had to run the next morning and couldn’t miss practice because he was on scholarship. I mean, he had all the reasons. He always said he wished he could stay but I knew he really wanted to go.
“You’re just going to sleep,” he said.
“I know,” I’d tell him. “It’s just that I sleep so much better with you here.” And that was true. When he was there I didn’t think about things as much, my brain would slow down and I’d be more peaceful about everything.
“But I have to go…”
“Okay,” I’d finally relent, and then he’d be gone.
The night he tried to break up with me, Cal had a late class then stopped a picked up a pizza for us. I hadn’t eaten much during the day because I hadn’t had the energy to walk to the grocery store. My new apartment was in a duplex and while all my new roommates had their bedrooms on the second floor of the house, mine was upstairs in a converted attic space, which included my bedroom and a little living room with a little couch and coffee table. It was nice because we could be alone up there. Part of the problem with my old roommates was having to see them all the time. Here I had more control over that.
We sat and started devouring the pizza quietly (Cal was hungry too) then started to talk.
“So how do you think it’s going?” he said. “With us?”
“Fine,” I told him.
“Do you think we get along as well as we used to?”
“It’s different,” I said. “We’re adults now.”
“We’re in college,” he said.
“Same thing.”
He shrugged. “How would you rate our compatibility?”
“Great,” I said.
“No complaints?”
“Cal, I’m happy we’re together, okay? It’s just a hard time for me right now.”
“Okay.”
I thought that was the end of it and that he’d just needed me to placate him, as I’d done so many times. Other girls used to complain about how their boyfriends wouldn’t commit. It was the opposite with Cal. We’d been together over three years and he was such a romantic sap. He was always worried about losing me and I’d had to tell him again and again: everything’s fine.
We ate some more pizza, opened up the two cans of Sprite he’d brought, and then I said, “My mom is being a real bitch about the money.”
“At least she gave it to you,” he said.
“I almost wish she wouldn’t have.”
“But you needed it.”
“I know, but now it’s just gives her another reason to try to make me hate myself.”
“Don’t say that,” he said.
“It’s just the truth,” I told him.
He was sitting on the opposite end of the couch from me and staring down at the pizza box. I could sense he wanted to say something. I could also sense he’d hoped to find me in a better mood. I mean, I’d had my good days since moving. My roommates were nice to me. I liked the space. I’d had moments, whole days when I felt pretty good. And I wasn’t that far gone that I didn’t know when I was being sulky. I knew it. I just didn’t care. Why pretend? I thought. Why fake it?
Finally, he blurted it out: “We need to break up. I don’t think we’re happy. Together.”
“What?” I said. “What do you mean, break up? Break up?”
Honestly, before he said it, I hadn’t considered that he might try this. Sure, we’d been having “relationship” talks in the months leading up to this, which was a lot of him asking me, “How’s it going?” and “Are you happy?” But at the time I’d thought we’d just been talking, being mature, like we said we’d be. But I suddenly realized what he’d been trying to do was bait me into acknowledging we had problems, plant some seeds with the hope they’d sprout and I’d realize that I wasn’t happy and we’d be better off apart.
I mean, it was true, but that wasn’t the issue. I hadn’t been happy since before I’d lost my waitressing job, which I’d lost because I’d missed too many days trying to catch up on my classes, which I’d missed because there had just been too many mornings I’d woken up without the energy to leave my apartment. Most days I’d stay in bed, not moving, trying not to breathe or think or do anything for as long as I could. I kind of had the feeling nothing bad could happen to me if I didn’t move. So I didn’t. And when I finally did get out of bed, all I wanted to do was sleep more or drink coffee and watch TV. This was just after all my old roommates had all turned on me. They said it was because I hadn’t paid my share of the utilities on time but I knew they were just looking for an excuse. Was I happy before that? I don’t know. At some point, I was and then I wasn’t. So I guess I don’t know exactly when it had happened, though Cal and I agreed that the new apartment would help, get me back to being myself. It just hadn’t happened yet.
And as far as our relationship, well, it was getting hard for me to distinguish that from the rest of my life. Over time, my life had gotten harder and Cal had been part of it all the way along. Maybe not the ‘making it harder’ part, but he was just part of my life, which could be broken down into some simple parts: college (which I was failing at), my job (which I’d lost), my mom (who was miserable to me), and Cal.
So there was no way I was going to let him break up with me, but I told myself to be quiet as long as I could, to let him present his case, dig his snaky hole, and see how deep he’d get himself into it.
Now it turns out he was taking an Introduction to Philosophy course that semester and he said we needed to think about our relationship through the lens of Utilitarianism. “The goal of Utilitarianism,” he explained. “Is to create the maximum amount of happiness in the world. All decisions should be made based on that question: what will lead to the maximum amount of happiness?” He said that in order to make the right decisions, people had to remove themselves from all equations, take out their feelings, their egos, and decide what courses of action would promote the greatest happiness.
“Just think if everyone followed that rule,” he said. “How much better the world would be.” We’d had long discussions prior to this about, not philosophy exactly, but human nature, human behavior, which we wished was better and we were sure, based mainly on how my mom treated me, and my old roommates, and even before that girls from my high school that used to want to fight me when all their boyfriends started noticing me (not that I cared), that most people were just naturally mean, selfish, petty, and cruel, and we were the victims. Well, I was the victim. No one was ever mean to Cal, but he suffered, like transitorily, through me. And he’d seen enough and paid enough of a price to agree with me that people were mostly bad to each other. That the more life they lived, they worse they got. That life destroyed people and spoiled everything.
Still, we had each other. Whatever life dealt us, we were in it together. At least, that’s what I’d believed. Up until this night. Suddenly it seemed Cal didn’t agree with me, that he wanted a life without me.
I looked over at him in the blue sweater I’d bought for him, and the jeans I’d picked for him, and his haircut I’d told him to get, and felt my jaw tightening up. He looked at me for a second, then away again. I stared at him and tried to stop gritting my teeth. He wouldn’t look at me and so I had to stare at his damn cheekbones. I mean, they were just almost perfect and if his nose had been a little smaller, he maybe could have been a model. Almost. Of course, he couldn’t because hated posing for pictures. Liked keeping his smile to himself, I guess.
I realized there was so many things in his life that he kept them to himself, or at least he didn’t share with me, like his running and doing well at races (he’d stopped talking about it), his friends on the team (I hardly saw them), his family (same), his plans for the future, which apparently didn’t include me.
I sat and sipped on my Sprite and listened to him stumble over his reasons again, telling me we were unhappy and if we took ourselves out of the equation and followed the rules of Utilitarianism, we had no choice but to break up because, as a result, the total amount happiness in the world would increase, his happiness increasing by more than mine would decrease. I got light-headed, then felt a buzzing in my head, not the good kind, and then I felt completely detached from my body, like my whole being was nothing but his awful voice droning on from another dimension.
Finally, I couldn’t help myself. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I said. “I don’t believe what you are trying to do.”
“You’re not happy,” he said. “And I’m not making you happier.”
“How do you know what will make me happy?”
“Maybe nothing makes you happy,” he said.
“Fuck you!” I screamed. I honestly didn’t know what to say, or what I was feeling. It was disbelief. It was frustration. Shock. Though it also seemed so inevitable. Mostly I was angry at him, seething, and everything I’d felt over time but held in, came pouring out. “Fuck you,” I said again. “This sounds like it’s all about you, you, you….”
“I think we’ll both be happier,” he said. “Once we—“
“Once you start fucking other girls.”
“This has nothing to do with any other girls.”
“But there are other girls, huh?”
“No, there are no other girls. I’ve never been with another girl.”
“But wouldn’t that increase the amount of happiness in the world,” I said. “For you and the lucky girl?”
“I’ve never been with another girl,” he repeated.
I knew it was true. I knew Cal wouldn’t do that, he wasn’t the type. He thought sex was serious business. He’d only do it if it he was in love. But I knew he thought about other girls. I could see how he looked at them, the way he used to look at me. And not only that, I saw how they looked at him, looked at my Cal, like they wanted him too, like he was viable.
“You don’t have the balls to cheat on me,” I told him.
“What are you talking about? You want that I should have been with other girls?”
“No, I’m just saying don’t pat yourself on the back for it.”
“I’m not.”
“No, you’re trying to philosophize yourself out of this relationship.”
He just shrugged and I could feel myself begin to literally shake, one hand twitching on the arm of the couch, the other clutched around a pillow, trying to make sense of it all. I looked at Cal, who was being so calm. It used to be one of my favorite things about him. He could be so peaceful about everything. Running ten miles a day will do that, I suppose. He’d expel all his enthusiasm then and then coast through the rest of the day and whenever I’d get upset, he’d stay calm, and calm me too.
The only other time I saw him get excited when we were having sex, then he’d get riled up, all smiley and happy once we got to knees-to-knees with our clothes off. “Your skin is so soft. So soft,” he’d whisper. His hands and fingers would be like trying to touch every inch of me all at once while he’d be going slowly in and out. “Mmmm, you feel so good,” he’d say. “This feels so good.” Now it’s not that I didn’t agree. It did feel good, but sometimes I’d wonder, where is this enthusiasm the rest of the hours of the day? Why can’t you get excited about more things?
I didn’t know if all men were like this as I’d never been with another, not like that, not all the way. I hadn’t been with anyone before Cal and since Cal I’d only made out with one other boy--on spring break my senior year in high school and I’d told Cal about it and I apologized and said I wished he would’ve come to Florida with me instead of staying home to run all week. But he’d been nice and forgiven me. Because back then he was the one who couldn’t imagine us apart. Back then he was just a sweet boy. Now he was something else. Not a big, awful man yet, but he was going that way.
My shaking had spread, with little spasms from my chest and shoulders going up into my brain, while he just sat there with that dumb, calm look on his face, which just made me angrier. I knew it was because he didn’t care about me. And how could he stay calm when I was so upset? When he was trying to break up with me?
“I just think this is a good time for us to think about it,” he said.
“I don’t want to think about it.”
He looked around my apartment. “You’re in a pretty good place, now,” he said. It’s true, I had talked about finding another job, had talked about switching my major, and my roommates did seem nice, all students, all friendly, but I’d just met them. I suddenly realized why Cal had been speaking so highly of them, trying to make it seem like they were so great. It was just to ease his conscience, so he could tell himself I wouldn’t be all alone, so he could get away without feeling guilty. But I didn’t know them, they didn’t know me.
“Is this because you want to run more?” I asked him. “You can run more. I don’t care. You can run twice a day.” I’d hassled him in the past about wanting to run more than wanting to spend time with me, caring about that more than he cared about me.
“This is not about my running,” he said. “This is about us.”
“You know, your running is not important,” I told him.
“What do you mean?”
“Nobody cares.”
“It’s important to me,” he said.
“And only you,” I told him. I mean, by this point he had figured out his life was not going to be like a Rocky movie, he wasn’t going to win the Olympics. He was only the third fastest runner on the team and they didn’t win meets or anything. He wasn’t a big star like in high school, but he still treated it like it was the most important thing to him, running, eating, sleeping, it was all part of the holy equation of getting faster, always faster. That’s all he wanted.
“I remember when I was important to you,” I said.
“You still are. It’s just…”
“It’s just what?”
“Well, I like running,” he said. “And I wouldn’t stop you from doing what you like.”
“For example?” I asked.
“That’s my point,” he said. “I think I’m holding you back. From becoming the best person you could be. You used to have lots of interests.”
“Go to hell,” I told him. He was right about the fact that there wasn’t anything I liked to do, but it wasn’t true that I used to have a lot of interests. It’s only that I used to do a lot of things. But that was just because I used to like people. And to spend time with people, you had to do things. So I did things. I’d never liked being alone. Not like Cal, he’d run alone, he’d study alone, he’d sit and read, he’d just be alone. I didn’t understand it.
“Life is not about just doing what you like to do,” I told him.
“It’s not?”
“Well, it is if you’re a narcissist. Is that what you want to be?”
“I just want us both to be happy. Happier, at least.”
“Stop saying that,” I told him. “You think that’s what life is? Everybody just gets to be happy?”
“I thought so,” he shrugged and looked away.
We sat a while and didn’t talk. He closed up the pizza box, he got up to look out the window, he untied and retied his shoes. I wouldn’t look up at him. I’d pulled my knees up my chin and sat motionless on the couch. Break up, I thought. Break up? I couldn’t imagine it.
After a while, I felt some of my anger go and I felt sad. I started to cry. “You’re going to be so much happier without me?” I asked him. “Am I really that awful?”
“Neither one of is happy,” he said again.
“You used to say you wanted to be with me forever,” I cried. He’d said it probably a thousand times, how lucky he was to have me.
“I know,” he said.
“Am I really that bad?” I asked him.
“Of course not,” he said. “It’s not you, it’s us. It’s become, like a separate thing we can’t control.”
“I could be happy with you,” I told him.
“Have you considered that you might be happier with someone else?” he asked.
“No,” I said, and closed my eyes. I couldn’t believe it. He used to be so nervous about me wanting someone else. I looked up at him and could sense how grand it would’ve been for him if I’d wanted someone else. He would’ve stepped aside in a second. How had it gotten to this point: where what he wanted most in life was for me not to want him anymore?
“You don’t love me anymore?”
“I still do,” he said. “I just don’t think we’re good together.”
I sighed. Was I still in love with Cal? I wondered. I guess I didn’t know, what love felt like anymore. I didn’t have any of the good feelings I used to. I don’t think he had any of the good feelings either.
“You were my first,” I said. He’d not only been my first boyfriend, he was the first boy I’d kissed, really kissed, the only one who’d put his hands on me, the only one who’d been inside of me, his body was the only one I’d put my mouth on, the first body I’d tasted. We’d done all our firsts together. And he was the first person, the only person, really, I’d known who’d loved me, really loved me, by choice, had lived a life before me, without me, not even knowing I existed, then, on his own deciding, had loved me. In the back of my mind I was trying to figure how it had happened, all of it, what had changed.
“And you were mine,” he said. “Does that mean we can never break up?”
“Remember when you begged me not to break up with you?” He looked away and remembered, I’m sure, how I’d wanted to break up with him when I was going away to college the first time and said we should “see other people.” He’d talked me out of that. I could see he wanted to dispute my use of the word “beg” but he couldn’t do it. We were both there. We both knew.
All he said was, “So you must know how I feel.”
“I know I was wrong,” I told him. “And you were right.”
I wondered if I we had broken up then, where would I be? Who would I be?
Maybe if I’d live a life without him I could have turned into someone different. Maybe if he’d been just my first, but not my only, I’d be in a better place.
I began to think about all the other boys I could have had fall in I love with me. In high school and first two years of college, it happened without me even trying. I mean, it wasn’t just because of me. Yes, I’d looked good, this was before I’d cut my hair, before my life had gotten all messy and shitty, which I guess is hard to hide from people. They didn’t look at me like they used to, no one did, not even Cal. But it had been easy back then because so many young men are so desperate for love. Yes, there are those who just want sex, who don’t care, but there are others who believe their lives will change if the right girl pays attention to them. And so many had thought of me as “the right girl.” I’d been the girl they’d been hoping to meet, I’d been the one. My window had been so open then, full of possibilities. But I’d stayed with Cal, my Cal, who didn’t want me anymore.
But I wasn’t going to let him leave me. And he knew he couldn’t just say goodbye. No, somewhere along the way, we’d made a deal. We were a couple. We were in it together.
“So according to your theory of Utilitarianism,” I said, going back to his argument. “If we break up, it benefits you and the world but not me and that’s okay?” He just shrugged. “You think because I’m already so unhappy, there’s only so much worse I can get and the best plan is to just let me sink down to the very bottom?”
“I don’t want that,” he said. “I want—“
“Are you so unhappy?”
“I think you are unhappier than I am.”
“How could that be?” I said. “If you’re stuck with such a terrible person? And I’m with such an angel who cares so much about the happiness of the world?”
“I didn’t say you were terrible.”
“But I am.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you care?”
“I care a lot.”
“Says the guy as he tries to break up with his girlfriend,” I laughed. He let out a deep sigh. “Maybe if we break up, my happiness will disappear completely and I’ll be dead.”
“What do you mean, dead?”
“Things happen….
“What do you mean?”
“Things. Happen.”
“What are you saying?”
“Did you ever consider that maybe you do make me happy, that you’re the only thing keeping me going? That I need you? Do you want me to list all the other things in my life that make me unhappy?”
“No,” he said, flatly. I knew he knew it was a long list.
“I mean, if that’s the case, to be Utilitarian about it, to create the most happiness in the world, which is what you seem to be suddenly so interested in, you need to stop being so selfish and deal with your life and all the people in it.”
“All the people?” he asked.
“Just don’t be an asshole to your girlfriend!” I told him. “Or you’re going to regret it. You can’t just shirk on your responsibilities.”
“You want to think of me as a responsibility?”
“Just try to be a man for once.”
“What do you want from me?” he asked, suddenly slouching. I could feel he was losing his resolve.
“If I have to tell you, then you can’t give it to me.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” he said. “I’m not the one you need.”
“You don’t get to decide that,” I told him. “Only I know what I need.”
“What do you want me to do?” he asked and put his hands up.
“I’m not going to tell you,” I said, but really I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I wanted except that on that night I didn’t want Cal to break up with me, I wasn’t going to let him do it.
I started crying again, this time full-on weeping, blubbering. I got up and went into my bedroom and locked the door behind me. I crawled onto the bed and cried into my pillow so roommates downstairs wouldn’t hear. That had been one of the complaints from my last set of roommates—too much crying. People were so mean and selfish. Cal was becoming one of them. I couldn’t believe it. Something had died in him.
After a while, I’d quieted down and he knocked on my door.
“Hey, let me come in,” he said. “We can talk more. I’m sorry. We’re not breaking up.”
“We’re not?” I said and leaned over and reached to turn the handle to unlock the door.
“No,” he said, coming to sit beside me on the bed. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” I told him.
He looked me straight in the eyes. “We’re not breaking up.”
“I know.”
I grabbed him and buried my head in his shoulders and held tight. Cal was skinny but strong and I felt safe in his arms. He wrapped himself around me just right. He knew just how to do it. He always had.
“We’re not breaking up,” he said again.
“I know.”
“Then why are you still crying?”
“Because you tried to break up with me.”
He pulled back so he could see my face. “But we didn’t break up,” he said.
“But you tried.”
“We just talked about it,” he said. “We’re still together, all right. We’re still together.” I put my face back into his shoulder and cried some more and he held me and said, “It’s going to be okay.”
“Promise?”
“Yes,” he said. “I promise. It’s going to be okay.”
When he got up to leave that night I didn’t say one thing to him about staying. I asked him again. “Is it going to be okay?” I was being calm.
“If we really both want it to be,” he said. “If we both want the same thing, to be happy together, there’s no reason it can’t happen. I mean, why wouldn’t it, right? If that’s what we both want?”
He gave me a kiss goodnight and I laid in bed and thought about him driving home to his nice house, his nice family. I hated them for trying to keep him away from me. I needed him more than they did. I alsothought to myself that he was right. A lot of what he’d said was right. We weren’t happy, we weren’t, and I began to cry again because even though we hadn’t broken up, I didn’t think we could ever be happy again. It seemed that too much had happened for that to happen. And I knew Cal knew it too, that we couldn’t get it back, that he’d only talked himself into it believing it, temporarily, until he could figure a way out and away from me.
Neither of us really believed we could get it back. The difference between us was that he believed he could be happy again and I couldn’t see myself being happy ever, with or without him. But Cal was all I had. Cal who wanted to be rid of me.
I wasn’t going to let it happen.
But I didn’t see how I could stop it.
Steve Nelson earned his PhD in Creative Writing from UW-Milwaukee and has had work published in a number of journals, with one story nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His teaching guide, "Teaching The Way: Using the Principles of The Art of War to Teach Composition," was published by Ten16 Press.
