We had decided to go to the supermarket to stock up on caffeinated foods. He wanted an iced coffee from his favorite brand and I wanted Yerba Mate energy drinks. These coffee-themed excursions had become a new way of expressing our love: my ability to hold back his coffee order betrayed my growing feelings.
He parked, put on the song Last Flowers from Radiohead and told me that he had thought of us a lot. I unbuckled my seatbelt to enter the store – not him. Didn’t we go there anymore, after all?
He confessed to me that he was not ready for a relationship, that he did not want to change our habits, but that what we were doing together was very much like a relationship. That he had apparently exhausted himself emotionally a few months earlier with another girl I didn’t know, that I couldn’t help it, and that it had nothing to do with me.
Talking about that on that Radiohead song, it’s a bit cliché, I thought to myself.
How to break up
He bombarded me with questions. What are you thinking about ? Do we continue as before? Or are we just still friends? He felt that I had my say. Do you need time, maybe? Are you coming with me to the store, or are you staying in the car?
“I stay in the car.”
He entered the store.
Wow. So that’s how you start the conversation to break up, I thought.
I have another version of this conversation. It was a few months earlier, with another boy. We were naked in his dorm room. Since he had a plane to catch, I remained lying down while he packed his things. We hadn’t gone to the football game that was taking place that evening, to spend these last hours together. I had found it romantic, just as I saw an artistic and erudite side in his garlands and his vinyl collection.
The festive atmosphere and the song Mr. Brightside in the residence hall weren’t loud enough to drown out his punchy statement: “I’ve thought about it, and I don’t think what’s between us can still evolve. I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, but that’s how I feel.
I was shocked and drunk. I don’t remember exactly my answer, but I must have said something like: “OK.”
Always the same refrain
This story reminds me of yet another version of this conversation, with another boy I had met the summer before. This time it wasn’t in a student residence, but in our mutual friend’s childhood bedroom; we were in each other’s arms, lying on the bed, wondering what classes would be like after the coronavirus.
The stab that he
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