Ghosts of Boyfriends Past Part III

The Director

By the time The Rocker and I ceased to exist, I came to the realization that I perhaps might be a bit fucked up.

I've always been an onward soldier type person. I decided to forget about men until I straightened myself out.

Then The Director came along. I've written about him before, in this post, which explained part of the reason why we eventually fell out.

He is also the first time I ever dated anyone from work. I would not recommend this practice to anyone, at any time, and he just worked there for the summer.

The Director was going to Columbia and wanted to be, what else, a director. I had never met anyone like this before. I grew up in Indiana. People here don't care about Hollywood or even think about how or why movies and the like are made. That would be, except for me, who loved the hell out of movies.

I was working on the line at the time, and one day they brought him to me to train on a job. We had the most wonderful conversation that day, and we started a friendship.

He lived right smack in the middle of the Gold Coast in downtown Chicago. We went to under ground comedy clubs, poetry readings, plays, film committees, and writer's groups...Things until this point I really didn't know existed just a train ride away.

We hung out the rest of the summer, and he finished up his classes. Then he started working full time at the plant, so that he could save enough money to finance his first film.

I wasn't attracted to him at first. Oh, he was cute alright, but he lacked the self-confidence my previous boyfriends had, and that is one of my bit attraction points. He had blue eyes and blonde hair fastened in one of those pony tails that were so hot back in 1995. Nice body, and oh, about 5'10. He's the shortest guy I ever dated, and considering I am 5'8, the first time tippy toes were not required for a quick kiss. To be honest, I hated that.

He liked liked me, but I had no clue. I have no radar for such things, and when my feelings became a bit more fond for him I thought it was totally one sided.

We had hung out for about, oh, five months when Christmas was coming around. He moaned about how commercial the holidays had become, and so I made a bet with him. I said you could get someone a present for under $5 if you tried really hard enough. He took me up on it, and I went in search of the perfect, $4.99 present.

This was harder then I thought. Then I came up with a really brilliant idea, but I just didn't know if I'd have the guts to pull it off.

I hadn't had umm sex in a really, really long time. The Rocker and I hadn't had "technical" sex, so The Hero was the last time I had done it. I blame all that I'm about to write on raging hormones. It wasn't my fault. Really.

He came over to exchange presents a week before Christmas, as he was going to his parents house for the holidays. He had gotten me this beautiful box, which I immediately loved. Now it was time for his present.

I went into my room to get his "present." I walked out of the room with a robe on, and handed him a receipt. It was for three bows. The robe fell off my shoulders, revealing three strategically placed bows. "Don't you want to unwrap your present?"

Oh, he did alright...

This was also, my dear readers, the beginning of the end.

After he umm. unwrapped his "present" he confessed his undying love and how he just never had the courage to tell me. This was great, right?

Yeah, it was great for about a month. Then every fun thing we did stopped. I don't know if he just tried hard before because he thought I was unattainable, or if he just got comfortable, but he just didn't want to do things anymore.

I'd want to go to the movies, and he'd want to rent one and stay home. I'd want to go out to a cool restaurant I had heard about, and he'd want to order in. Where the hell did the fun loving guy I knew go?

The one cool thing was he didn't have a jealous bone in his body. If he wanted to stay home and sleep, he was more then happy for me to go out with my friends. This was great, but I wanted to do stuff with him too.

His art became non existent also. He had a cartoon he had written and drew that he hoped to make into a feature film or TV series. Before he had worked on it constantly, now he was lethargic about it. His script for his Independent film he wanted to make laid under a pile of dust. He was perfectly content with going to work, coccooning at home with me, and sleeping.

I, was not.

Then I met his family, who I lovingly refer to as the Christian Extremists. If you read that link up there, you know why I didn't like them, and if you didn't here it is in a nutshell. His Mother basically told me if I had any thoughts of a long, lasting relationship with her son (we had already been together like 9 months), then I would become Lutheran, and I would teach our children Lutheran values. I told her to get bent. Not in those words mind you, but that was the jist of it.

Between his family and his home-bodyness, I was starting to feel that whole claustrophobia thing again. The was one problem though, and that was that I loved the hell out of him despite all that.

It wasn't until Martin Luther King Day, a year and a couple of months after I gave him his "present", that I realized what I needed to do. He had went to his family's for the holiday, and I opted out, which he totally understood. I went out with some friends, and I ran into a good friend of his.

Now I'm pretty sure his friend's thought I was the anti-Christ. He dumped them all after he met me. I used to beg him to spend time with them, but he just wanted to hang out on my couch.

His friend made some smart ass comment to me, and I told him it wasn't my fault he didn't call them anymore. Then he asked, "How's his cartoon coming?" We both already knew the answer to that one. "Did you know he was planning on moving to either NY or LA when you two started dating? He'll never leave now. He'll never leave you."

He was right. We had discussed how The Director needed to be in one of those two cities to really make things happen for himself. It was out of the question for me to move, as I still had a huge part of raising my sister's kids. I guess I never thought about how that was affecting him, how he wasn't trying to make his dream come true because of me.

So that did it, and when he returned from his trip I broke up with him. He just kept asking me "Why?" over and over. I told him that we really didn't have a future together with all the family type conflicts, and that both of us needed to get on with our lives. It wasn't until years later I told him the truth, and that was so he would leave and make his dreams a reality.

Two months later he moved to NY and got a gig directing commercials. He did direct that Independent film, and you readers might some day watch it on your DVD player. He ended up marrying a nice Lutheran girl, and I sure hope with all my heart that he is happy...