Contests
Share Your Shittiest Love Story, Win a Free Copy of J.A. Tyler’s New Book!!!
This is a man being so much other than.
How the love falls out of him, replaced by beads, by water, by nails, by cardboard.
Bent on a curb, blowing kisses to dead lips in that window above, a voice calling out a name, her not looking down at the wreckage.
A man when there is none left.
This is a love poem, a love poem that doesn’t want to be, a love poem about shattering open, about groping for what is left when there is nothing left, when subsistence isn’t enough, when we are damaged and the memories of what was, are all that is.
To celebrate Valentine’s Day & the forthcoming publication of J.A. Tyler’s second book, A Man of Glass & All the Ways We Have Failed (now available for pre-order from Fugue State Press) publisher James Chapman has kindly offered to give away a free advanced copy of the book to one lucky HTMLGIANT reader who shares their shittiest love story in the comment thread to this post. The contest is open between now and Valentine’s day. On the 14th, J.A. Tyler will select the winning comment/story.
In high school, I was not smooth with the ladies.
One night, “Girl X” and I were hanging out and things seemed to be going well—and by that I mean, I wasn’t making a complete jackass of myself. Anyway, it was really late. We were at my house, shooting pool and watching cheesy horror movies. Somehow or another, things progressed to my bedroom—just talking, lights off, clothes on, just laying there. I remember thinking to myself how it had been two whole years since I’d lain in a bed with a girl with the possibility of mischief occurring. At some point or another, she turned her body into mine and found my lips with hers.
I was completely caught off guard.
I’d obviously wanted something to happen but I don’t think I was prepared for it happening that very second! The kiss wasn’t very long and it wasn’t very passionate. I think it was her way of testing the waters, seeing if there was any sexual tension between us. I simply laid there for about a minute, probably less.
And then I whispered something that causes me to cringe to this day. I whispered, Thank you.
What the fuck was that? Thank you? I may as well have said your mouth tastes like a severed foot. Not only was “Thank You” a completely ridiculous and utterly unsexy thing to say, it made absolutely no fucking sense given the context of the situation, whatsoever.
Thank you ma’am, may I have some more? Thank you, I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to sample the texture of my philtral dimple with your tongue and fleshy vermillion. Thank you.
Needless to say, the potential for any sort of sexy mood was killed—immediately—and the lights went on very shortly after that. Nothing happened and that essentially marked the end of our friendship as well—I was never good at maintaining awkward relationships anyway. I mean, fuck, I was just 17 at the time!
I wish I had a particularly shitty love story so I could win this book!
let’s see, all I’ve got is that once I was into this girl and we dated for a little while, but then I found out that she was going to break up with me so I avoided her for days, which of course didn’t work.
like 4 years later I thought I saw her in the parking lot of a Coldstone and started shouting her name loudly, but in the middle of the third or fourth shout I remembered she was in Italy on a trip with a choir. a girl sitting on the curb with her friends had the same first name, I guess, because she turned to me and said “what?!” and I didn’t know what to say.
but the first part of this story takes place in the 7th grade and the second part takes place in high school, so it’s all not very meaningful.
Anal. bad angle. shit dick.
I saw my dinner on my date’s dick once. We didn’t have time to digest it being in his parent’s basement and all. I remember(ed) having to find something to bite that wouldn’t go down. A next time.
I don’t see the problem.
A few years ago a started dating this girl, everything seemed way too perfect. I found out that she had just gotten released from a mental hospital for mostly bullshit charges, which I was okay with. Something still seemed strange though. The last day I saw her she came to my room crying, hysterical about a hidden eating disorder. I consoled her and we hung out and in the end I had never felt closer to anyone. We made plans for that weekend, Valentine’s weekend, but her pancreas failed later that day. She was rushed to the hospital, I stood in a coffee shop waiting for, checking my phone. I didn’t hear from her for four months, in which time, she had recovered, moved back home, and got engaged. Oh well, do I get a free book or what?
This is an amplified account of a true story: http://vimeo.com/9283315
Here’s the short version. Stupidly got engaged while still in college to a woman a year below me. Happy as pigs in shit. Then in an even wiser decision, I got her name tattooed on my neck while traveling. Fast forward to months after I graduate (two years after the engagement) where I decided to move to Boston where her friends were living, hoping to build a life for both of us while she did a semester at school and her last semester in India. Less than two months after moving, she dumps me completely saying she no longer wanted to get married.
Of course a bomb went off inside me. Wound up dropping 30 pounds in 3 months, quit my job and had to be coaxed into moving back in with my mom in Jersey. Two months later I finally got a job temping only to have the basement I was living in fill up w 6 feet of water and raw sewage. Lost 95% of my possessions, including anything related to her (luckily.) Of course she had returned from India just then so I used my situation of living in my friend’s living room for a week to try and get the pity make up (only the pity happened.)
I had the tattoo covered up about 6 months after (It’s now a city skyline that reads “Your Name” underneath), coincidentally after I learned that she had told all of my college friends very private and embarrassing information that they asked me about. It wasn’t until years of therapy, antidepressants and the death of my mother, where I started writing seriously, that I got over it. True story, but no regrets.
…and thirteen years later, in the middle of the night, she left. Without explanation or warning. She was seeing someone, before the papers were final.
I dated a guy for a a series of 2 month stints when I was still in College. It wasn’t anything serious, and we mostly just enjoyed getting drunk and sleeping together in various places. The first time we broke up, I ended things because summer was coming and seemed easier than having to wait until we both moved back to our parents’ houses for the break. That night, we both got drunk separately and were blissfully unaware of the other’s existence. He, it seems, was also blissfully unaware of the world around him, and ended up getting in a pretty awful drunken bike wreck on campus, resulting in the loss of his short term memory. The rest, you can imagine, is hilarious. Tears, fractured skulls, the nagging suspicious that we’re still dating.
The second time we broke up, it was because I came in his eye, and instead of saying anything, I just laughed uncontrollably for a really long time because the face he made was incredibly funny.
The third and final time we broke up, we were getting ready for bed and he was in the bathroom brushing his teeth. I was looking through his bookshelf, deciding what would be a good bedtime story to read to him, because I’m adorable, and I selected Moby Dick. I thought the chapter ‘cetology’ would be particularly good nighttime reading. When I opened the book, I saw that it had been hollowed out and in the cavity were about 10 little tiny bags of cocaine, and some pills, too. The white whale.
It’s still unclear to me whether I was more offended by the secret drug habit, or the destruction of one of my favorite books.
Dana was tall. We were on the swim team. On a Tuesday she drove me home. When she pulled up to my house, she turned off the engine and looked at me. I couldn’t move and I couldn’t speak, so I sat there, which would lengthened out the uncomfortable feeling, which would make me quiet still, until she finally told me to get out of her car.
That Friday Dana took me to her house and introduced me to her dad. He had a beard and a “Toes on the Nose” Yarmulke. Their house was massive and smelled like laundry detergent. Since we had our swimsuits she recommended that we sit in her Jacuzzi. Dana’s dad had gone upstairs and it was just us. I was scared which made me quiet. She asked me what was wrong and I swallowed.
It was many minutes we were sitting there, pruning into the night. She looked at me and I looked away. I wanted to disappear and I wanted to stay there forever. She looked at me, and I sweated from the heat of the water and sweated in my anxiety.
She said she was going to sleep and I said alright. For a while I was in the Jacuzzi listening to the bubbles and looking up at the black sky. I don’t know why I stuck my fingers in the water jets.
I dried off and went up to her room. She was awake with the lights off. The Gypsy Kings were playing. I looked at the hills and valleys of the blanket on her body. I wanted to talk but she said she wanted to go to sleep. I said alright, but that I was going to kiss her. There was a pause and she said okay. I lowered myself onto her lips and kissed her and smelled expensive shampoo and the detergent. Afterwards, I didn’t know what to say so I left, closing the door quietly behind me.
The next morning I felt pride in myself and played Walking on the Moon by The Police. I envied myself. I shook my head that when I thought about how nervous I’d been. Dana dumped me that afternoon.
In 1995 I was broken clean in half by Nicole Kidman. At least thats’ who everyone said she looked like. They weren’t wrong. We started as friends when I first moved north. Reserved and beautifully clumsy with an infection, goofy laugh. Things were fine for a while, but then things…stopped. By things I mean sex. It was always felt each of us has a “sexual self”, a mode we enter when our molecules get riled enough to antagonize our brains and jump start our bodies. Sometimes that self is a lot like our regular selves. Sometimes it’s a version of us on acid, speed, and hunger. When things got intimate, her other self emerged. Thing is, it always seemed like something unnatural, something she realized she would need to be once in a while to keep things in the relationship running smoothly. However, the more comfortable we became after moving in together, the more comfortable she was forgetting that part of the relationship. We worked on it, but it all just seemed too forced. I rode out my savior complex as long as I could, but month after month of sleeping next to her like a friend, I couldn’t take it any more. It came off as more of a relief when we had the discussion. I soon moved out and tried to start the next chapter. I weighed my options, cut my losses, took stock. All that “I’m okay” bullshit.
Six months later, still single, I heard “Sunday Kind of Love” on the radio and had an aneurysm. It rebooted my system and left me driving around town trying to pretend I wasn’t going to visit her. Of course, I did. I pulled in front of the duplex and walked up the rickety stairs I still remembered with a smile. I would tell her I was wrong. I would throw myself on the mercy of her court. I reached the landing and knocked. Movement inside. After a few seconds, the door opened a crack and there she was. One eye looked at me suspiciously through the crack, and I could see her fluffy robe gripped tightly around her neck. I was on emotional auto pilot. As she regarded me like a salesman, I blathered about mistakes and true love and fate, completely ignoring the reality of the problems we tried so hard to work out. Finally, I ran out of happy-ever-after platitudes and watched her watch me with a mix of confusion and pity. Refrigerator door slam. Oh. The situation before me unfolded all at once. It was noon. She was in her robe. There is someone in the apartment.
“Oh. I see. I’m. I’m sorry. I’ll….”
She didn’t wait for me to finish my stumbling. Her one raised eyebrow said “Get it, Romeo? Yeah, I thought so.” before the door shut in my face.
I stood on the landing, well the bottom part of me did. My torso was somewhere else, wondering what happened to the world. I made it down two steps before my knees gave out and I sat and cried like a seven-year-old girl. Nicole Kidman had broken me completely, and I would have to sit there until the two parts came together enough to get the hell off her stairs.
The sticking of fingers into the water jets were a nice, subtle hint at what you were thinking. Nice. Other good descriptors, too, the smell of the house, the hills and valleys of the blanket on her body. You never give the indication that you guys were going steady, which makes the last light sort of a head scratcher. Thanks for sharing.
Ouch. Man, you should write this up longer into a creative nonfiction piece.
Ouch. Man, you should write this up longer into a creative nonfiction piece.
JA Tyler’s books are of no interest to me, so don’t bother putting me on the list for a book. Shittiest love story: JA Tyler.
Okay.
The rest of this story isn’t important, as it is short, stupid, and reflects poorly on everyone involved. What you need to know is the end. I knew it was going to happen at a potluck with people I knew only in passing, which I went to anyhow, with non-vegetarian beans that I claimed were vegetarian out of laziness. This potluck also involved an entire store shelf of Manischewitz. Nobody else was drinking. I was. When it ended, nobody else was shirtless. I was.
The problem ended up being I parlayed that experience into staying a virgin for 3 more years :(
Will the winner be announced here on HTMLGIANT?
Darconville, you win. Curt & awful. Send me your mailing address and Fugue State Press will drop an advanced copy to you.
Owens, Trey, Patrick, Davis, Garcia, eric from queens, Blount, Smith, SCS, Michael, & two square boxes, as a consolation prize, if you send me proof of pre-order I’ll hit you with a free signed copy OUR US & WE or THE ZOO, A GOING or INCONCEIVABLE WILSON. Thanks for playing along.
Jatyler58: eat shit.
Darconville, you win. Curt & awful. Send me your mailing address and Fugue State Press will drop an advanced copy to you.
Owens, Trey, Patrick, Davis, Garcia, eric from queens, Blount, Smith, SCS, Michael, & two square boxes, as a consolation prize, if you send me proof of pre-order I’ll hit you with a free signed copy OUR US & WE or THE ZOO, A GOING or INCONCEIVABLE WILSON. Thanks for playing along.
Jatyler58: eat shit.
Darconville, you win. Curt & awful. Send me your mailing address and Fugue State Press will drop an advanced copy to you.
Owens, Trey, Patrick, Davis, Garcia, eric from queens, Blount, Smith, SCS, Michael, & two square boxes, as a consolation prize, if you send me proof of pre-order I’ll hit you with a free signed copy OUR US & WE or THE ZOO, A GOING or INCONCEIVABLE WILSON. Thanks for playing along.
Jatyler58: eat shit.
Awesome!
OK, preorder made, where do you want me to send the proof?
Fantastic Joe. Much appreciated. Forward receipt / proof to me @ jatyler@mudlusciouspress.com & let me know which one of those signed items you’d like. I’ll ship it asap. Best,