The Republican

November 5, 2001.

I was a Radio-Television-Film freshman at UT, ducking the Stalker at every turn. I usually ate lunch outside behind the undergraduate library, feeding the pigeons, and occasionally seeing the Stalker walk by Hogg auditorium several yards away. Luckily, he never saw me. I saw that he had begun smoking again, as he had threatened to (good—he'll die quicker). Also, he now had a black trench coat he wore every day, plus he had taken to frequently wearing all black. Loser. Leave that behind in high school.

Today I did not see him. I was sitting on the ground, wearing jeans and a production staff shirt from a high school production of Guys and Dolls, feeding pigeons cracker crumbs, and eating an apple. I leaned slightly on my ugly black messenger bag. I had wanted a new bag when I started UT; I really should have gone with a more conventional style. The hated bag, however, proved fateful today.

As I sat on the ground feeding the pigeons, I saw a tall, black-haired, slim young man walking toward me. He eyed me curiously, and I inwardly cringed, hoping he'd keep walking. I was not in a social mood. Naturally, he ignored my telepathic request.

"Excuse me," he began, "but I couldn't help but notice that you and I have the same bag."

"?"

"Where did you get yours?"

"Um, Office Depot," I replied, embarrassed. I hated that damn bag.

"I'm [the Republican]," he introduced himself.

"I'm Lauren," I said. We shook hands. We talked for a moment more, at which point he said,

"I was going to invite you to lunch, but I see you've already had yours." I smiled. "Perhaps you would care to join me for coffee instead?"

"I prefer tea," I replied. It's true. The resident tea drinker in every social situation, I keep a dozen varieties of tea at home and frown on coffee. Usually, this gets me funny looks and light ribbing. The Republican, on the contrary, looked delighted.

"Earl Grey?" he smiled hopefully.

"That's my favorite." It was at the time; then I discovered Irish Breakfast and never looked back.

I put my lunch things away, stood up, and accompanied the Republican to the Cactus Café, which became a near-daily haunt of mine from that day until I graduated. The Republican paid for two teas, and we sat down and talked. I don't remember much of the conversation except for him complimenting my "oceanic blue eyes" and trying not to roll aforementioned eyes at his cheesiness. In retrospect, I probably should have stood up and left right then. Oh well.

I walked with the Republican to an appointment with his thesis advisor in Garrison Hall, the history building. We shared a goodbye kiss, and I walked off to the library. Before I was even out of the building, though, the Republican caught up with me; his appointment had not lasted long. So we spent a little more time together before he walked me to my RTF class. I sat down in class, giddy with excitement about this new guy, and vaguely wondering how I would ever concentrate on class. One of the teaching assistants walked up to the stage and announced that our instructor was ill, so class was canceled. There was a collective groan, especially from people like me who could have gone home a couple of hours earlier. I went home for the day, where I saw that I already had an email from the Republican, saying that he had enjoyed meeting me and would I like to meet again. His kisses were fantastic; of course I would. I replied and accepted.

The Republican and I met for lunch again the next day, which was when he revealed that he had worked on the Bush campaign. Oh dear. I was less political then than I am now, but it bothered me all the same. These days, I refuse to date conservatives at all—he is partially to blame.

The following day, the Republican met me again and, I thought, acted quite antsy the whole time. He didn't say anything, so I decided not to push it; he'd talk if he were ready.

He was ready soon enough.

As we walked across the main mall of campus, he finally spit it out:

"We're through."

"Why?" I immediately blurted out.

He sat me down on a cold, pigeon crap-covered cement bench under a tree and explained it to me.

"I was dating this other girl, but she decided she wanted to see other people," he began. Meaning she already was seeing other people. "So she left, and only a day or two later was when I met you." Oh, so he picked me up to achieve parity with her. How flattering. "But then she decided she didn't like her new guy that much after all and wanted to get back together. I told her I'd think about it." So he wanted to run back to the skanky, finicky bitch with the lousy attitude toward men? Fine, let her have him. They deserved each other.

I walked with the Republican to his bus stop, torn between tearful pouting and justifiable homicide. The Republican kept casting me guilty glances.

"I suppose you want to slap me now."

"No, no; it's fine," I lied.

We repeated this conversation several times before the bus came. As the bus rolled up, the Republican started to turn away from me to step onto the bus. I got an idea. An awful idea. I got a wonderful, awful idea.

Remember that scene in The Pink Panther where Sir Charles tells Princess Dala, "After what I just said, a real woman would have slapped my face"? She doesn't and pretends to let it go. Then, at the last second, when he's least expecting it, she cracks him across the jaw.

Oh yes.

As the Republican and I turned away from each other, at the last possible second, I whirled around and slapped him as hard as I could.

Sadly, my angle was a little off, so the sound of my palm colliding with his cheek did not produce the satisfyingly final crack I would have liked. However, the edge of my hand caught him right across the carotid artery, so I no doubt made one hell of an impression one way or another.

The guy sitting on the bench at the bus stop heard the ruckus over his headphones and looked up in shock. The windows of the bus clouded with curious faces pressed up against the glass. I spun on my heel and sailed away with my head held high, biting my lip to stop myself from laughing as the Republican staggered onto the bus, embarrassedly shrugging to his fellow passengers.

It should have ended there, but, obviously, it didn't. I had learned a lot from my terrible relationship with the Stalker, but this was new territory, with new mistakes to be made, and boy did I make them.

I pouted a little over the next three days, and then the Republican found me in my usual lunch spot again. The weather was starting to turn cold again, but I had avoided the Cactus Café so as not to run into him. Of course, he found me anyway, and he told me he'd done a lot of thinking and didn't want to get back together with his ex. Apparently he had reached the same conclusion I had, albeit somewhat less cynically. Also, his mother had told him to.

"I told my mother about you," he said.

"Oh?"

"Yes, she knew about you and [my ex]. I told her that I'd broken up with both girls." He relayed the conversation with his mom to me.

"How'd it go?" she asked.

"Well . . . the first one was a little tearful."

"And the second one?"

"She just said, 'Why?'"

"Oh, that one's a keeper." Further to that, she asked, "What's she like?"

"Well . . . she's cute . . . she laughs at my jokes . . . "

"Oh yes, that one's a keeper."

Never one to ignore his mother's advice, the Republican decided I was indeed a keeper. I didn't need his mother to know that, but it was helpful to have her on my side. I decided I liked her.

The Republican and I overlooked the slapping incident and opted to be happy together over the following month or so, until, of course, the first fight. I don't remember what it was about—probably politics, or else me discovering that he occasionally smoked. Better than a chain smoker, but still. Either way, the fight had a distinctly final tone to it, and he and I parted ways again—less violently this time—but stayed in touch. In the meantime, I didn't date anyone else, though the Republican encouraged me to. He kept flirting with me, but he insisted he was fine with me seeing other people. I wasn't. Not twenty-four hours later, the incident with the NROTC Guy occurred, and I reveled in a glorious "I told you so" moment. I knew it was only a matter of time before we got back together, but before that could happen, he would have to end it with a girl he'd started talking to online. She lived in Pennsylvania, and they had never met in person but spoke on the phone and instant messaged each other. I was jealous because I still liked the Republican a bit, and, perhaps more to the point, I fretted that the Republican would prefer the company of somebody he'd never even met to mine. I needn't have worried. They broke up via instant messenger over a fictitious pair of shoes, of all the damn things.

It seemed the Republican and the girl from Pennsylvania were playing some kind of role-playing game online, and the premise was that they met for a business lunch. She was describing her outfit to him, which happened to include a pair of open-toed shoes. He pointed out that for the style of business lunch they were having (or pretending to have), open-toed shoes weren't appropriate. She flipped her shit and started preaching about business etiquette, dress codes, female fashion, etc. The Republican finally produced an etiquette book and quoted a relevant passage from it that proved her wrong. Later, he related the whole story to me. I don't think he realized that my laughter was as much at him as it was at her, but I didn't really care. He knew that I would never in a million years make such a big deal about a nonexistent pair of shoes; thusly he started to think about getting back together with me.

A week or so before Christmas, the Republican and I were talking on instant messenger when he told me his car had broken down. He complained of not being able to do any Christmas shopping, and I offered to take him myself since I had a working car. He agreed, and his mother drove him to the park and ride near my house. I drove him to the mall and a few other local stores before dropping him back off at the park and ride to catch the last southbound bus back to his house. Naturally, we got back together. This time, we had better results.

Over the next two or three months, the Republican and I spent a lot more of our time together, getting to know each other well and falling in love. We would walk across the UT campus on cold days, with him sharing his jacket with me. One of my fondest memories of my time at UT was of walking past the undergraduate library one bitterly cold morning, arm in arm, singing "A Little Help from My Friends" with him, both loud and off-key, to the confusion of the students inside the windows.

The Republican was, of course, all too familiar with my notorious clumsiness. I tended to spill drinks at the Cactus Café, which we frequented, or accidentally throw open the doors to the student union with too much enthusiasm, resulting in ear-splitting cracks. He never failed to chuckle at my antics, probably because he at least occasionally got dragged into them. He and I shared in some kind of clumsy disaster in every single IHOP in town. There are nine IHOPs in Austin, and we embarrassed ourselves (mainly me) at every one. We knocked over the table at one, knocked down waitresses at the second and third places, demolished a plant in front of the building of the fourth, and crashed through a line of people at the register at the fifth. I spilled coffee at the sixth and tripped over a rug and face planted at the seventh. A friend of the Republican's tagged along with us a couple of times, where, at the eighth IHOP, the waitress forgot his order entirely, and at the ninth IHOP, they catastrophically botched the order.

So, I don't go to IHOP anymore. I can't. I haven't been banned (surprisingly), but going is clearly not a good idea. Kerbey Lane is better anyway. The Republican and I never had any noteworthy disasters there.

Anyway, clumsiness and all, I was enjoying my time with the Republican. He was everything the Stalker wasn't, which was quite a refreshing change. The Republican didn't tell me how to dress, guilt trip me, try to make me cry, or blame his problems on me. He didn't tell me how to dress, and he had decent dress sense himself. He had a basic understanding of chivalry and etiquette, even if it was primarily skin deep. He was also fairly bookish, which is a must for dating me. I also learned that he had been in Navy ROTC in his freshman year at UT. He had then gone to Annapolis during the summer between his freshman and sophomore years at UT, only the forty hours of credit he had at UT wouldn't transfer. That in itself seemed a good reason to forego the Naval Academy, but it wasn't his real reason. His real reason was his hatred of then-President Clinton. The Republican said that when he swore to defend the Constitution against all enemies, he decided that then-President Clinton counted as such.

That led to the third breakup.

It didn't last, of course. A few weeks later, we got back together. I was, meanwhile, still being harassed by the Stalker. I complained about it to the Republican, who advised me to reply to the Stalker's latest instant message by saying "If you contact me again, I'm calling the police." I refused point blank to talk to the Stalker at all. The Republican, realizing my fear and the out-of-hand situation, made me give him the Stalker's screen name. I was reluctant to involve anyone else, but I reasoned that he'd probably produce a more real threat than a cop since there's not much police can do about stalking. So I handed over the screen name, and the Republican made the Stalker back off permanently. I never saw him again. That relief kept us together a good long while.

Inevitably, though, more fights arose, usually political in nature. He knew I was a socialist, but he kept trying to get me to register as a Republican, leading to the fourth breakup. We patched that up, but he kept trying to change me in other ways: He hated that I was an atheist even though he himself struggled with faith. He for some reason thought that he should be religious, and he attended chapel regularly, trying to reach God. He tried to make me do the same. That was the fifth breakup.

The Republican also couldn't leave my choice of major alone. He was a history major, part of the College of Liberal Arts. Everyone already knows the standard jokes about liberal arts majors and how useless their degrees are, yet he seemed totally oblivious of the hypocrisy of complaining about how useless the degree I was working toward was. He insisted that I change my major to English (my best subject) and get certified to teach, never mind that I loathe school and despise English classes in particular.

After the sixth breakup, he seemed to accept that I could not be changed. We got back together and stayed together through his graduation from UT. He helped me get a job at Wendy's, and I helped him move to College Station, where he was attending grad school. His terrible car kept breaking down while he tried to move, and then he got a stomach bug. He took the above as omens that he wasn't meant to go to grad school and nearly didn't attend. I refused to let him give up on his education so easily, and I insisted that he rethink his decision. He finally, grudgingly, decided I was right and moved. Naturally, the stress of moving led to copious fights and a seventh breakup.

Typically, the breakup didn't last, and we got back together less than a month later. We would talk online or over the phone most days, and every couple of weeks, I would drive to College Station to spend the day with him. I knew his car would, in all likelihood, not make it to Austin, but it nevertheless bothered me that it was always me driving to visit him and never the other way around. I knew he was a busy grad student, but I was working my way through school in a ridiculously time-consuming major. It wasn't fair.

One late autumn morning, I packed a few things and drove to College Station with a plan to spend the night. I tried to pack light, but, since I had hair to my waist at the time (I have kept it mid-back length ever since), I couldn't avoid packing a hair dryer. I arrived at the Republican's apartment with my bag and a small box with my hair dryer in it, and I quickly put my things away in the bathroom. My nightgown and toiletries fit neatly in the small space available, but the box with my hair dryer had to be wedged tightly onto a shelf above the toilet. I shrugged and went off to enjoy my day with the Republican.

Later that day, a huge fight erupted. I have no idea about what. In any case, it was a truly epic battle, which caused us to nearly break up. Furious that I had driven all the way to College Station to get yelled at over something stupid, I grabbed my things out of the bathroom to go home. The Republican followed me, still yelling. I had everything in my bag when I saw the box with the hair dryer in it, and I grabbed it and pulled.

The bottom of the box immediately burst open, and the hair dryer rocketed out and bulls eyed into the toilet with the cord still neatly wrapped around it, with no ricochet or splash or anything.

The shouting immediately ceased as the Republican and I stared in stunned silence at the fruits of our labor.

After an awkward moment, the Republican squeamishly fished the hair dryer out of the toilet and handed it to me. I didn't take it. He set it on the counter. I told him to throw it away.

We rather forgot about what we'd been fighting about after that and made up. I shed tears of laughter that Christmas when I opened my present from the Republican: A travel hair dryer.

Finally, in February, the Republican informed me he wanted to take a break for one month. He listed no official reason, but I could only guess it was to see other people, much like when we met. Funny how the same things that bring people together also push them apart.

Not two weeks later, well ahead of the appointed time to get back in touch and see about getting back together, the Republican contacted me, wanting to get back together. I refused. I remembered all the times he'd tried to change me, all the nitpicking, all the fights. We were opposites. It would never work, and I was wasting my time and would have been better off looking for a real, lasting relationship with somebody closer to myself. Besides, I suspected he'd likely cheated on me; that was the only logical reason he'd have wanted a break without a huge fight preceding it.

We stayed in touch, albeit sporadically. He would email me every so often, usually on some flimsy pretext but always with at least one flirtatious comment attached, which I ignored. I wanted to tell him to give up, but I didn't know how to go about it. Finally, the inevitable last straw reared its ugly head. I was bored one evening and poking around student-run webpages on the UT site and found one with a familiar story on it. The author of the story, a stranger to me, described an ex of hers. She described a story her ex had told her, while they were dating, about a recent incident in a local store. I recognized the story as something that had occurred when the Republican was out with me. Apparently he hadn't bothered to tell her that he was with someone else at the time. Either that or she knew he was cheating and left that part out of her story.

Livid, I replied to the Republican's latest email with a link to her page and a message reading only, "You lying, cheating son of a bitch; I hope you get run over by a bus the next time you try to hit on a girl." He responded to say "I dated her while we were on a break." No he didn't. Asshole. I blocked him and never spoke to him again, though I did learn that he's married now. I wonder how long it will last.

I learned many lessons from the relationship: I can't date conservatives, religious guys, or smokers; I can't deal with open relationships; multiple breakups don't work (the first should also be the last); long distance relationships don't work; I can't let guys try to change me; and, holy hell, really pretentious guys are really annoying.

I took a year off from dating after that. I nursed many crushes but didn't pursue them, either because they weren't single or my interest in them fizzled. The next guy I actually dated was the College Pothead, who was equally terrible. Luckily, in his case, I had sense enough to get out early. Not as early as I should have, but at least I learned my lesson on avoiding bad dates.