To the three women that have dumped me

I

We met in that period of high school where I "Didn't Give A Fuck" and wore t-shirts emblazoned with animals and openly sneered at my classmates and used words like "artifice." You were a platinum blonde firecracker with a similar chin to Jenna Jameson. When you called me out for being casually racist, I thought you were OK. When you dedicated Dancing Queen to me at a bowling alley, I had to ask you out. We went on one (group, movie) date and sat across from each other at lunch for a week. Then you dumped me, by proxy. My cellphone rang, and your proxy said merely, "Hi Harvey, are you sitting down?" in her dulcet South African accent. She explained that you thought that I put you on a pedestal and that you would never be good enough for me. I'm baffled to this day. We made out in a bathroom months later at a house party. Then you became a lesbian. Then you moved to Salt Lake City and got a bunch of piercings. I don't think about you.

II

My first and only epistolary romance. If you don't think a calendar year of well-paced e-mails loaded with PoMo jive and self-congratulatory pop culture references is sufficient to make two hipsters fall in love, you're wrong. (But in a way, you're also right.) Each salvo felt like a secure stitch in an ever-unfurling fabric. I felt like our correspondence was Pulitzer-worthy; hindsight reveals it was not. I erred when I decided to meet you in real life. We met and had sex, and two weeks after that you told me you Wanted To Be Friends. Though I have not lived through an earthquake, I distinctly remember sitting in your living room and feeling the earth move beneath my feet. I smiled and lied that "the feeling was mutual." I am finally over you, but I still think about you sometimes.

III

My last duchess. Our dalliance was brief and potent like the impact of a syringe. You laugh at all my jokes; especially the casually racist ones. Your eyes are perfect, and I fell for them immediately. Then one day you opened your lips and ground started to move. I didn't brace myself, nor did I reach out for a handhold, or breathe into a paper bag until it all blew over. Like a man with two bite marks in his chest, I ran; down the stairs of your apartment, and into a black cab, and away from your intoxicating laughter. I never stopped thinking about you.