Damn My Ex 

john, my then fiancé of three years, got suckered into buying one of those pay-in-advance cruises from a telemarketer. he gets off the phone, all excited, and tells me about this great honeymoon he just bought for us. romantic, right? newly married couple out in the caribbean, listening to the steel drums and all that. i just couldn’t help picturing the sunset over the blue water.

fast forward to the next day when i hear him talking to his mother on the phone. he’s telling her how she’s going to love the cruise he just bought for the four of us. FOUR?!?!?! did i just hear that right? surely he meant two.

nope. four. me, him, his mom, and his mom’s wife. yeah. and to top it all off, we were sharing a cabin. thanks, john, i think i’d rather go camping.

so christmas came, and we actually had some money. i gave marie some money, and dropped her off at a strip mall she said she wanted to shop in. looking at the stores in the mall, i could see some decent gifts coming my way. when i pick her up, her bags are packed with stuff. cool, finally some decent gifts from her, right?

not really. come christmas morning, when it comes my turn to open presents, i find two gifts for me under the tree. one was cologne that smelled like straight rubbing alcohol, and the other was one of those big-button calculators made for little old ladies who can’t see shit.

me: “what about all those bags?”

marie: “oh, those were for me, wanna see what i got?”

tons and tons of pretty nice stuff. all for her. she bought my stuff at dollar general. guess i was worth about $6 of my money to her.

picture it: valentine’s day.  a restaurant we’ll call blue crustacean.  marie and i sitting, eating, talking, and just enjoying the evening alone.

she ordered the live maine lobster, added some crab legs, and dessert later.  she loved the card, flowers, and gift.  i did good, right?  i mean, it’s a lot of pressure on v-day!  not quite.

two weeks later, i get this: “you ruined my valentine’s day”  WHAT!?!?!?!?!!!!

apparently, since the blue crustacean is one of my favorite restaurants, i was selfish when i took marie there.  my point was she had been drooling every time a commercial for them came on.  she was dropping hints like flies about how she’d just love to go there, so I TOOK HER!

then, of course, it’s also my fault she was party to lobster-murder, and she really didn’t enjoy herself, anyway.

she got a little wake up call the next v-day.  i told her i wasn’t going to make v-day about her and her alone.  it’s a day for lovers, and there’s two of us dammit.  so, if she wanted to help me plan it, we’d do something, if not, we wouldn’t.  i mean in all the years gone by, she’d never bought me a card or flowers or a gift.

sure enough feb 14 rolls back around, and we’re just at home like any other weeknight.  she’s pissed to all hell.  i reminded her that since it wasn’t all about her, but rather us, she obviously didn’t care since she didn’t plan anything.  we never did celebrate another v-day.

poor live maine crustacean, it never saw her coming.