The Then and Nows of the Infamous Exes

You turn on the tube. "Where Are They NOW?" appears on the screen with pictures of David Cassidy, Luke Perry, and some other hottie from some other decade that went M.I.A. You stop. You think. You munch on whatever salty snack you've got in hand, and your mind begins to wander. It doesn't wander to other celebrities you had a crush on as a kid (Christian Slater, perhaps? For you grandmammies out there, Clark Gable, maybe?) NO. It wanders to a different "Where Are They NOW?" category: your ex-boyfriends.

I have precisely 6 ex-boyfriends. Two of them didn't know they were my boyfriend, and only two of them lasted more than 2 weeks. Two of them dumped ME, and one of them broke off the engagement the day of our wedding. Dirty bastard.

Stan was my first boyfriend.
THEN: A 7-year old boy with a knack for fort-building and a killer pair of roller blades. He once mouthed the words, "I. LOVE. YOU." with hand movements to go with it as he roller bladed past me on the asphalt of Mountain View Elementary. The day of our wedding I came to school in my Blue Dress and my three best friends spent all of recess picking dandelions for the bouquet. Stan didn't bother dressing up or showing up. It was at that moment I knew we were over. Maybe if I had informed him of the wedding things would have been different.
NOW: A 17-year old boy who has traded in the signature-blades for a skateboard. Listens to heavy metal and has more piercings than words in his vocabulary. Anorexic-looking drug addict with a staring problem. Has a self-applied-tattoo of a panther that looks more like Mogli than Bagera on the front of his neck and insists on wearing eyeliner only on the lower lids. Laughs at air a lot.

Perry was my second boyfriend.
THEN: 6th grade. Awkward-looking fellow with glasses and a buzz cut. I was the only girl who noticed the beautiful olive skin and the only girl who failed to notice the acne. He sat behind me. He didn't talk. Until one day I turned around and said hello. It was then he began to joke about hiding Hitler in his basement and how he goes down there every night and whips him, but sometimes his mom goes down there and makes love to him. To some he may have seemed like a serial killer in the making, but to me he was a shy boy with a sense of humor waiting to be unleashed to anyone who would listen.
THEN: 7th grade. We dated again. And again. And again. Because after everyone had made fun of me for dating Perry The Mute With The Bad Acne, summer came. We broke up. We came back to school. And Perry had changed. Perry. Was. A STUD. All the girls were after him, but he always stayed with me. (Except that one time he dated my best friend for a day and the other time he dated one of my good friends for a couple weeks and that one other time he was hitting on some 6th grader.) He was cute (except for that one time he got neon-yellow highlights and gelled his hair down into his face for a month) and he was addicted to porn. But that didn't matter.
NOW: He moved to South Dakota and last I heard of him he still had a porn addiction. Other than that I don't think I'll ever hear of Perry again.

Charlie was my third boyfriend.
THEN: My best friend had liked him for the entire previous year and I could never figure out what the hell she was thinking. (Maybe because I never talked to the guy. But I was perfectly comfortable to just sit back and judge him.) Then 7th grade came and I started to befriend this Charlie fellow. I don't know when I decided I liked him but the next thing I knew I had been 3-way called and my friend had declared, "You two are now dating." and hung up. So I guess what made her declaration official was the fact that me and Charlie stayed on the phone and chatted it up, then the next day at school people just knew. It was the first time I had become good friends with the guy before having a crush on him, and I think that's why we lasted. (for the mere 2 months we dated. but that was hella long term for me, man) Good times.
NOW: Seen him here and there but who knows what he's up to. Apparently he's still a very funny guy.

Ben was my fourth boyfriend.
THEN: Total cutie with the maturity of a 5-year-old and that "you can't have me because I'm dating your best friend but I'm still gonna flirt with you all the time but remember you can't have me because I'm dating your best friend who I think is the hottest thing alive" thing goin' on. Which sucked. There was this whole mix-up thing with the 3-way thing THAT WORKED BEFORE but for some reason didn't work as well this time and I went to school thinking we were a couple and was really confused when he wasn't talking to me and talking to the "hottie with a body best friend" instead and I think I cried when I got home that day.
NOW: Maturity level has stayed the same. Might be on steroids. Ran into him at a party and he was really nice but I also was really nice and I don't think either of us are normally that nice. If you know what I mean. He's one of those guys who take pictures of themselves in front of the mirror with the picture cut off right above his junk and you can see that line that has a name I can't think of at the moment and man do I hate when guys do girly shit like that.

Jack was my fifth boyfriend.
THEN: I didn't even know who the guy was and I had girls coming up to me saying, "Jack really likes you. He talks about you ALL the time!" So yeah, I was a little creeped out. Then I met some guy and we started talking and it wasn't until a month later I realized HE was the Jack people had been telling me about. So yeah, I began to get creeped out again. Besides, I had the biggest crush on his best friend. But then we kept on talking. And writing notes. And holding hands. And all this would have been the perfect little love story if I wasn't 15 and him 17. Because 17 year olds don't have problems with expressing the way they feel. And because 15-year-olds do shitty things like break up with their boyfriends when they get a haircut.
NOW: Male model.

Scott was my sixth boyfriend.
THEN: Nice. Shy. Broke up with me over a phone message. He must have been in a tunnel or something because he was breaking up the whole time. And yes, that was an intentional pun. But just in case I didn't get the phone message, I had a nice MySpace message awaiting me. We were one of those cutesy-awkward couples who never touched. You gotta experience that at least once in your lifetime.
NOW: Nice guy. Really nice. I know it seems like the point of all this is to bash the ex-boyfriends, but I have nothing bad to say about Scott. He is a genuinely kind fellow. And very attractive. But of course we all know that looks don't count...

So there are the Infamous Six. I wonder if I'm on a list somewhere out there...

"Natasha"
THEN: An innocent girl with a pair of maroon pants. Preferred teasing her hair to brushing it. Smelled of Loreal Kids and kept live cicadas in her backpack. Chased me around asking me to elope with her when I had no idea what that word even meant. All she ate was candy. A little on the bossy side. Talked about Harriet Tubman a lot and was always reading a book as she walked down the hallway. Had a gap between her two front teeth that she would squirt juice out of like a fountain. It was pretty cool, actually.
NOW: Wears a lot of black then gets mad when people ask her if she's gothic. Always thirsty. Never wears pants. Not even jeans. Not even in the winter. Smiles to herself sometimes like a crazy person on the side of the street. Still has the gap in her front teeth. Tells everyone to pronounce her name NatAAAAsha, like she's from Minnesota or something. I still call her NatAAWWWWsha, though. (because I'm a little bitch.) Used to drive this giant grandma car until she put a huge dent in the side of it. Now she drives a little black car and she drinks coffee a lot and I think that must be why she's stayed the same height since 8th grade. Hasn't had a boyfriend in a year then blogs about how sucky all her ex-boyfriends are. Maybe that's why. But man the chick is HILARIOUS.

And that's the Then and Nows of the Infamous Exes.