The Encyclopedia of Exes Read online

  THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EXES

  26 STORIES BY MEN OF LOVE GONE WRONG

  Edited by Meredith Broussard

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  Introduction

  Explanatory Chart

  ANTHONY by Steve Almond

  THE BREAKUP CEREMONY by Touré

  CAR by Matthew Sharpe

  DEVOTION by Adam Langer

  EGGING by Jeff Johnson

  FIVE by Jonathan Lethem

  GEOGRAPHY by Michael Schur

  HONESTY by Ben Greenman

  INNOCENCE by Nick Fowler

  JOHN by Joshua Braff

  KISS by Anthony Schneider

  LAST by Richard Rushfield

  MURMUR by Panio Gianopoulos

  NIGHTLIFE by Lee Klein

  OVER by Jack Murnighan

  PROFANITY by Darin Strauss

  QUITTING by Dan Guterman

  RADIO by Sebastian Matthews

  SEALED-OFF by Jonathan Ames

  TRIANGLE by Gary Shteyngart

  UNAMBIGUOUS by Ben Schrank

  VIRGINITY by Neal Pollack

  WINSTON by Lewis Robinson

  XANAX by Marc Spitz

  YOUTH by Justin Haythe

  Z by Dan Kennedy

  Acknowledgments

  Biographical Information

  Other Books by Meredith Broussard

  Credits

  Copyright Page

  FOR BC AND SCOTT

  PREFACE

  John Aboud

  I don’t want to brag or anything, but you are reading this book thanks to me.

  The volume you now hold in your hands—edited, managed, and guided by Ms. Meredith Broussard—sprang from the success of her previous anthology, The Dictionary of Failed Relationships: 26 Stories of Love Gone Wrong. This fact won’t surprise you if you are even a casual reader of our country’s finer book-reviewing publications or of this book’s jacket. However, what only the most astute and careful of readers could know is that all of the contributors to The Dictionary of Failed Relationships were writing about their failed relationships with me. Anyone could tell that The Dictionary included work by some of today’s most acclaimed young female authors, but only true insiders could know that it included work by some of today’s most acclaimed young female authors who have loved and lost John Aboud.

  None of the contributors were so blatant as to use my name. Believe me, my legal team and I checked. But evidence of a deep longing for John Aboud is everywhere once you read with an eye toward finding it. In decoding the essays and stories in The Dictionary, I’ve had to rely on subtle textual clues, information from the contributors’ biographies, and the principle of logic where you eliminate everyone else a story could be about until the only possible subject left is yourself. If not always ironclad, I think you’ll find my reasoning thought provoking and competently proofread.

  Contributor Judy Budnitz and I were friends in college, but we were never involved romantically. And if I’m reading her piece in The Dictionary correctly, that fact is killing her. Lazy or slapdash readers might not pick up the signs, but to someone as versed in the workings of the female psyche as I, Judy’s yearning is as obvious on the page as her innovative use of hyphens. (Nice work, Judy! I regret not seducing you, too!)

  Heidi Julavits and I have never met, but I was an avid reader of her literary magazine, The Believer, from the day it launched. Alas, you know how things go: I got busy and accidentally missed a few issues, and eventually I stopped looking for it. I read her piece in The Dictionary, and oh my god, is her anger evident. God? She’s really pouring it all out there, completely beside herself that I’m now eight months behind. You might argue that I’m reading too much into it, but honestly, isn’t there enough arguing in this country already?

  About two years ago, I spotted a “Missed Connection” ad that read “Ranch 1 Chicken last Thursday. You said you know it’s a good place when the cops eat here, ordered third helping of fries. Would like to book you for being a sexy rebel. Call me.” There was pretty much no one that ad could have been about but me. And based on what I interpret as a love of sexy rebels in her Dictionary contribution, “Berniced,” that ad could only have been placed by Eliza Minot. So essentially, she was writing about me without even knowing me. And that’s so awesome.

  My relationship with Dictionary contributor Pam Houston certainly qualifies as “failed.” She and I fought for three straight years and squeezed in a few dates along the way.

  Do you like that line? Personally, I’m very proud of it. Technically, though, it’s utterly false. The full truth is our relationship only existed over Yahoo Messenger. We never met face-to-face, let alone genital-to-genital. And the person I exchanged messages with called herself “Pam from Houston.” But come on, what are the chances? And, yes, we only IM’ed over a Labor Day weekend, but we IM’ed with such intensity, it was easily the equivalent of three years. So I will continue to let rueful wit trump truth. And Pam “Houston,” if you’re reading this, could you unblock me from your buddy list? Thank you.

  While reading Erika Krouse’s contribution, entitled “Zero,” I was struck by the stark eroticism of her prose, its teasing use of pronouns, and downright salacious employment of the subjunctive tense. I instantly remembered another woman who could use the Mother Tongue (and a tongue stud) to such powerful effect. Admittedly, I connected with the woman in question through a charmingly obscene massage ad in the back of the Village Voice, not from reading the Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, or the New Yorker, where Ms. Krouse has apparently published work. Still, I was convinced that Ms. Krouse and the “new in town,” “ready to play” gamine who so comprehensively abused my body were one and the same. And then I realized why Ms. Krouse would consider our relationship a failure: I am a very bad tipper.

  Amy Sohn is a fixture of the New York magazine world and of my fantasies. She likes to have sex—lots of sex—and then write about it. I, too, like sex. Writing I could take or leave. To the best of my knowledge, Amy Sohn and I have not had sex. But there are certainly some wild evenings spent with anonymous strangers in my past, and, no, I’m not talking about online gaming. So purely on a statistical basis, I’m confident we have indeed had sex, said sex was really great, and because I haven’t been in touch with her since, Ms. Sohn is mad at me. It’s not rocket science, my friend.

  Las Vegas. The Imperial Palace Casino. When a bachelor party meets a bachelorette party, stuff happens. And for me, “stuff” took the form of two bachelorettes named Martha and Mary-Beth who utilized me in a by-the-book threesome they felt a joyless obligation to try. Hey, I’ll take it. During the rote couplings, “Martha” made no mention of winning a 2003 NYFA award for fiction. Nor did “Mary-Beth” in any way hint she’d published in The Georgia Review, Ploughshares, or the St. Ann’s Review. But if those dutiful partiers were not, in fact, Dictionary contributors Martha Southgate and Mary-Beth Hughes, I’ll eat the costume shop tiaras I took from their room as a memento.

  Colleen Curran, who wrote a piece entitled “LDR” for The Dictionary, lives in Richmond, Virginia. I grew up in Richmond, so I was thrilled to see a Richmonder make good. Then, I read “LDR.” I might have totally misinterpreted this, but it struck me as a clear rebuke to “certain people” (me) leaving Richmond and not visiting often enough. I get that from my parents, now I have to get it from Colleen Curran, “whose fiction has appeared in JANE and Meridian”? Back off, Colleen Curran. Why did you have to preemptively cause our relationship to fail?

  The contributors’ notes in The Dictionary reveal that Anna Maxted lives in London with two cats, Disco and Natascha. Could it be mere coincidence
that “Disco” and “Natascha” were two words that came up quite frequently on a special night I experienced in St. Petersburg? Not one of the potential brides corralled for my perusal mentioned publishing a novel called Getting Over It in 2000. But it seems one of them had, and her name was Anna Maxted. Or should I say . . . Maxtedkova? Considering that most men who travel to Russia in search of eligible ladies aren’t of a literary bent, it’s not surprising that the women I met downplayed any ability to navigate the competitive publishing market. Instead, they emphasized such skills as dancing, “cook you the food” and “ride ’em cowgirl with the penis.” Anna, I’m sorry I didn’t bring you to America.

  One name among the contributor bios leapt off the page and practically punched me in the face: Leslie Pietrzyk. Her contribution, “Pain,” practically punched me in the junk. There’s simply no other conclusion than that Leslie Pietrzyk is very mad at John Aboud. This probably all started after I wrote a (hilarious, of course) humor piece intended for the New Yorker’s “Shouts and Murmurs” page called “Children’s Letters to University of Nebraska Athletic Director Steve Pederson.” Wow, I chuckled just typing that. One of the letters in the piece was from “Leslie Pietrzyk, age 8. Cozad, NE.” I just thought the name was a product of my infinite creativity. In retrospect, I might have seen a mention or two of Ms. Pietrzyk’s novel Pears on a Willow Tree. So sue me. (No, please do not.) What continues to amaze me is that my piece (inexplicably) never ran in the New Yorker! Obviously, it’s a small literary community out there, and some troublemaking punk at the New Yorker slipped my work to the real, live Leslie Pietrzyk. You may cancel my subscription, Mr. David Remnick. Call off your dogs!

  A similar miscalculation must have been what ruined my relationship with contributor Susan Minot. I had no idea she wrote the screenplay for the movie Stealing Beauty, a movie that I once remarked “looked like a total chick flick.” Well, clearly she found out, because her piece in The Dictionary has been called “a literary evisceration of self-proclaimed movie authority John Aboud” (my phrasing).

  Rachel Resnick’s brief bio in The Dictionary covers her many travels, her career in film, her many publishing credits, and her 1998 Pushcart Prize Special Mention. But conspicuously absent is any reference to her time as an ace girl reporter . . . and my ex-wife. She was going to turn her back on the ink-stained life—and me—to marry some cloddish oaf. And then it hit me! I’d lure her back to the newspaper biz with the scoop of a lifetime! There was this anarchist, see, a real worker’s champion type, who was sitting on death row an innocent man. No way a gal with a nose for news like Rachel’s could pass that up. Except she did. Totally didn’t work. I assume that anarchist met his end in Old Sparky, I stopped paying attention. But, oh, if you could have heard our banter when she told me to fuck off. Anyway, I assume this is the same Rachel Resnick. I don’t think it’s that common a name, is it?

  There are four writers in The Dictionary whom I knew from Brooklyn’s thriving writer scene, if not by face then by reputation. In fact, Maggie Estep, Shelley Jackson, Lucinda Rosenfeld, and Darcey Steinke have downright sterling reputations among the young literati of the Borough of Kings. But none of the four have reputations as sexually insatiable Amazons who deem men fit only for servitude and humiliation. Well, they should, as I found out the hard way. I was enjoying, perhaps a bit too much, an evening at Sunny’s, the bar in Red Hook that’s a favorite of writers and people who say they’re writers. Red Hook once had a reputation as one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in New York, but in this post-Giuliani, Gawker.com era of ours, I felt certain I could stumble home without being seized by muggers, drug dealers, or hot young female authors. All I know is, when I woke up in my apartment it was three days later, and I was naked. Reading that predatory foursome’s contributions triggers fleeting, dreamlike visions of the comely prose stylists working my body in ways that only respected novelists can.

  I understand this all sounds absurd, but let me assure you, this is not merely another instance of me getting drunk and fantasizing about Jhumpa Lahiri.

  I was new in Los Angeles, lonely and desperate to fit in, so it was only a matter of days before I fell in with a gang—a pocket bike gang. We were the Westside Itty Bitties, all of us addicted to the rush of tearing along at thirty-seven miles per hour, fifteen inches off the ground, our 47cc, two-stroke hogs between our legs. We respected no laws, least of all those of physics. I fell hard for the leader of La Pequeña Unas, a girl gang with which we had an uneasy coexistence. I only knew her by her gang name, “Mini Chopper Minnie.” She was a fiery vixen who lived fast and rode fast, as fast as a non-street-legal pile of fiberglass with a half-gallon tank would allow. When we made love, we did so without helmets. But the day came when I no longer got joy from annoying neighbors with the dull, droning buzz of my nine-horsepower steed. I had to get out, and every Westside Itty Bitty knows the only way out of the pocket bike life is in a pocket hearse. It wouldn’t have been safe to say good-bye to Minnie, so I just drove a doughnut in her yard with my eight-inch tires. That would have to do. Based on her story “Threesome” in The Dictionary, it’s all but certain that my Mini Minnie was Dana Johnson, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award in Short Fiction in 2000. “Threesome” could only have been written by someone with vast knowledge of both pocket bikes and how I kiss.

  Four years ago, I traveled to Paris for a visit to the City of Light’s picturesque cafés and discreet laser penile rejuvenation clinics. And it was in one such clinic that I met “Jennifer,” a nurse whose job it was to hold my hand during the most excruciating phases of the procedure. A cursory reading of her piece, “Islands,” was all I needed to realize that my Jennifer was the story’s author, Jennifer Macaire. Her bio informed me Jennifer was a former model for Elite in Paris. You’re telling me, I thought. I don’t think I’d have made it through my operation without Jennifer’s delicately accented words of encouragement and her soft gray eyes reassuring me from over her surgical mask, the extra-thick mask they use when there’s going to be a lot of smoke. I felt an unmistakable spiritual connection grow between Jennifer and myself in those harrowing minutes as the laser blasted away years from my flesh, giving me the supple cock of a twenty-three-year-old in place of my withered twenty-seven-year-old stump. I made my fatal error a few hours after the procedure was complete and Jennifer visited my recovery room. “You were very brave. Très courageux,” she said. “Thank you,” I replied. “What say we try this puppy out?” Her face, so warm and welcoming before, set into a stony Gallic frown. She stormed from the room. I’d have given anything, except my newly pearlescent manhood, to take back those words.

  Now, if this evidence hasn’t convinced you that my romantic escapades inspired The Dictionary of Failed Relationships, and thus made The Encyclopedia of Exes possible, I have one final revelation that should seal the deal. Consider for a moment: What would inspire a young lady to edit, manage, and guide something called The Dictionary of Failed Relationships in the first place? Yes, the talented writer/editrix Ms. Meredith Broussard and I have a history. What baroque circumstances conspired to bring us together and then drive us apart? Sadly, of all my tales of relationships gone wrong, my relationship with Meredith is the most sordid of all. She is a gifted editor, I am an infrequently sober writer who is always making excuses for missing a deadline. We were doomed from the start.

  I sincerely hope you will enjoy reading The Encyclopedia of Exes and guessing which of its contributors I’ve made sweet love to. (It’s not Lethem.)

  INTRODUCTION

  Meredith Broussard

  In truth, this book is a direct response to a question I was asked over and over during the summer of 2003, when I was out on the road promoting The Dictionary of Failed Relationships: 26 Stories of Love Gone Wrong. “What about the men?” a radio host asked me during a live interview in Iowa City. I made something up in response—I didn’t have a good answer. You’d think I might, since I’d flubbed the question when it was asked by a televis
ion host the week before. But no, I was still unprepared. This is the thing that media trainers tell you never to do, just like career advisers tell you never to go into an interview without a preset answer to the question “Tell me about yourself.”

  The truth was that I didn’t know what men thought about relationships or breakups. I was pretty good on what women thought, since I’d been through so many myself and nursed so many girlfriends through breakups. But guys? A big mystery. Most of my guy friends ended up being boyfriends, or we ruined the relationship by sleeping together. I felt like the furthest thing in the world from an expert.

  However, the question kept coming—not only from interviewers, but from people I met at readings. Former coworkers whom I ran into at coffee shops. Single relatives. Gradually it became clear that I was expected to know something. So, I turned to the only problem-solving arena I know: literature. I’d encountered what felt like the full spectrum of women’s experiences with failed relationships over the course of doing the first anthology. Putting together another anthology, I reasoned, would put me in touch with the full spectrum of men’s experiences of relationship disasters.

  Art seemed to be the only interesting medium through which I’d get any accurate representation of men’s feelings about breakups. Nobody is honest in person. Psychologists have found that people lie in a quarter of their daily social interactions. However, the written word reveals the most bald-faced truths about the psyche. Hence, the collection includes both fiction and personal experiences. Even though the prohibition against confusing the author and the narrator is well known, every reader speculates privately as to what might be true or not true in first-person narratives. Have fun speculating while you read these stories. It’s all fiction. Really.

  The methodology for selecting these authors was simple. I asked some of my favorite writers for stories, then asked them to recommend their favorite contemporary or up-and-coming writers. I asked my female friends for recommendations, and a few suggested their ex-boyfriends. I called up writers I’d seen doing readings at bookstores, writers whose work I’d admired in magazines, as well as writers who had bylines in shows and publications that made me laugh. Everyone was presented with the same challenge: send a story or a personal essay that somehow involves a failed relationship. The result is the eclectic collection before you.