Killing Puppies

Going through a break up, the mind becomes simultaneously capable of the most logical and the most irrational thoughts. "I'd better get rid of that piece of driftwood she kept from our trip to San Diego. We're never going to make a mobile out of it now." Which makes sense, the mobile was her idea, and, really, what am I going to do with a giant hunk of sun-bleached wood, only it's the middle of the night, I'm in bed, the drift wood is in my car, not really bothering anyone, so its disposal, though perfectly within the realm of logic, is hardly a priori.

Except for once, during a breakup which effected me with a profundity even I have a difficult time explaining its impact, I've never worried that I was going to die alone, that my tears sprung from a bottomless well of despair, that I would never laugh again, smile at a stranger, catch someone's eye and, eventually, fall in love. It's the little things that get me. Like that driftwood. Man, that would have been a cool project: collecting shells and rocks on the beach--she loves the beach!--amassing trinkets and treasures until we are old and grey, adding them to our never-ending expansion of a mobile, all anchored to that one very special piece of wood she found on our trip to San Diego.

I have to see my ex when I go back to visit New York because she has my coat, which made sense in a world where my first stop from the airport after Papaya Dog would be her bed, which happens to be adjacent to her closet and my coat. It is significantly less convenient in a world where that closet is a half an hour train ride from my old apartment in Brooklyn where I will be crashing on my old couch while my roommates are on tour.

"Well, I better make plans to get that coat. It was such a find at that flea market," I think. "Silly to waste a great coat like that. And Los Angeles is so sunny, it seems practically criminal to go out and get a whole new coat." So I ask my ex if she'd like to grab coffee,and could she please bring the coat with her. I should just swing by when she is at work, grab the coat and leave her spare keys (whose real estate I've already assessed on my key chain and decided they need to go, immediately, post haste! I'd mail them now, but what about the coat) but if I go to her apartment, I'll have to see the dog. which may be too much for me to bear. I loved that dog. I'm not sure I'd make it through saying good-bye.

I can let go of the thought of our marriage, but am deeply saddened to think that we'll never have the wedding we planned, with aerialists, and my dear friend Bonnie serenading us for our first married people dance--seating scary uncle dick next to evil mother-in-law Nancy. Those tiny lost fractions of moments are what upset me.

At least every hour, I think about calling her and casually asking that she please not use the pillow that I made for her, as it was made with love, and, given the circumstances, is no longer appropriate.

I have a theory about all of this. I call it "killing puppies." The basic premise is this: if we see a movie where a puppy is killed, brutally or otherwise, we cry. It's horrible. Yet, we sit through movies like "Saving Private Ryan" or "Natural Born Killers," and we're ok. We're not happy about it. Maybe we're upset or intellectually provoked, but we're not sad like when the puppy died. My theory is that we can't process multiple human deaths at once--it's just too much, so it washes over us a bit more generally, whereas the puppy is just big enough of a tragedy that it gets through the little door in our hearts and makes us cry.

The same theory predicts that when I go through a break up with someone with whom I had thought I would spend the rest of my life, the things that upsets me most are driftwood, keys and a pillow. The thought that the relationship as a whole is over is too big a concept to permeate whatever gizmo it is inside of me that makes me sad. It's why, the last time heartbreak struck, I lost weight from crying so hard over the scent of her hair.

"So we beat on," I tell myself, "boats against the current, we are borne back into the past." Maybe I'll never make that mobile or marry a woman who makes killer turkey tacos, but I have to believe that somewhere, an even greater adventure lies ahead: one where the puppy lives, and all the people do, too.

Ah-ooo!