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Sometimes I think that the beauty of youth is the stupidity.

When I was twenty three, I wanted to marry a man who told me I would be a terrible mother. He used to ignore me and play with his dog (an incredibly sweet and well-trained pug named after a Guy Ritchie reference). The dog should have been a warning sign. Well, the dog's name. There is nothing wrong with liking Guy Ritchie. There is something wrong with liking Guy Ritchie so much that you name your dog after something he does.

I think I was impressed that the dog was so well-behaved. "How could anyone with a dog this well behaved be a bad boyfriend?" is probably something that I thought. It didn't occur to me at the time that the dog had turned out this way due to a multi-month commitment on the part of the man to stay home and not drink himself to death. She was the classic solution employed by a dry alcoholic to the problem of drinking- which is to say, she was "anything other than 1) drinking or 2) getting actual help."

By the time I came around, the dog was wonderful and Rob was drinking again. The man's name was Rob, by the way. He had a last name, but I couldn't tell you what it was if you offered me a million dollars. It's just not anywhere in my mind anymore. The last name of a man I wanted to marry when I was twenty three has been lost to time.

I can tell you that Rob had a handsome father and a beautiful mother. The mother was stupid and the father was smart. His brother, whose first name is gone along with the surname, was bookish and quiet. He was probably the better brother. Rob was also quiet, but not bookish. He liked medium movies and drinking bud light. A lot of bud light.

I didn't mind the drinking, because I was also an alcoholic. At that point, I hadn't really every tried to stop, and so it didn't occur to me that abstaining for a six month (or longer) period through a sweating, desperate tactic of training the shit out of a little goblin dog might be a red flag. I didn't mind the drinking and I didn't mind that he didn't talk to me, because I was an alcoholic and I had low self-esteem. When you have low self esteem, you will put up with all kinds of bullshit- including your "boyfriend" ignoring you when you go to hang out with him and his friends. His friends talk to you, and they're pretty cool, so at least you're not bored.

Another red flag I ignored is related to why I used quotation marks around the word "boyfriend." Rob was the kind of guy who did not want to use labels. I would start conversations with something like "We have been seeing eachother for six months now. I am not seeing anyone else. You say you're not seeing anyone else. Are you my boyfriend?" And he would say "Why do we need labels?" 23-year-old me would collapse internally and reply with an attempt at "being chill about it." Middle-aged me has come to realize this is bullshit. Labels are good. Labels are how you can tell the difference between "Sugar" and "Rat Poison." Labels keep you from drinking bleach. Also, it is always the case that someone will try to play off a deep fear of commitment as just being, like, sooo chill about labels. Not once has "Why do we need labels?" meant anything besides "I am a widdle scaredy pants who needs to work some shit out with a therapist, but won't!" If you are actually chill about labels like girlfriend or boyfriend or partner, then you will be like "Ok I don't need this word, but if it matters to you I am happy to use it." Just be honest, asshole! Just say "I am afraid of being a boyfriend/girlfriend/partner and the responsiblities it implies!" But then that would require self relfection and radical honesty, lol.

This concludes volume 1 of the Rob Stories. There are more- how we met (working at a pet store), his taste in movies (bad), his tattoos (worse). But I don't feel like writing more now. THEM'S THE BRKAES WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEE