Lauren

The last time I lived in Atlanta was the second time someone broke my heart. Mary being my first. When I moved to Milwaukee, I was hesitantly starting up a long-distance thing with the Folk Singer, but his drawback was that he was from Baton Rouge and this elicited the statement from me, "I think they train people in Baton Rouge how to break my heart." Because the only other times my heart had been broken was by people from Louisiana. I was beginning to feel like a Lucinda Williams song. That guy, though, broke the pattern and it was a different person from a different location that completed the mission the third and final time.

At any rate, I was talking about Lauren. She was my second.

I met her in the way that many people meet their lovers these days. That is, to say, on the internet. She quipped with me some sort of electronic flirtation that let me think there was no way she was going to not be interested when we met. But of course, I was skeptical. I had, after all, had many such similar encounters. So when I met her, I had my guard fully up.

I can't remember where our first date was, but I do remember that she wooed me. Hard core. She was an artist and a graphic designer. She had these enormous paintings in her apartment which were expertly rendered. She had worked on book projects that made me jealous. She'd done work with Lisa Lopez in some aspect or another, which was awesome, and also which was before Left Eye died.

Lauren brought me little gifts. She had long, curly auburn hair. I had never before been partial to long hair, but I have to admit that ever since her, when I see a woman with long curly hair, it makes me catch my breath. She also had all of this roundness about her features. When we had talked on the phone to arrange who we were so that we would know what we looked like when we met, we had both said that we were average shaped and average sized for our bone structure, and it was true. But she was quite a bit taller than me. Even though she had such a pretty pretty face, and such lovely beautiful hair, I always felt a swoon of masculine coming from her. Like she would protect me if she had to. Even though she was kind of shy and probably not all that tough or badass. She was, I think, quite a softie. But there was still that air of protection. Maybe it was just her suede jacket, but it felt like hormones were wafting off of her.

One evening, we had walked to see some folk musicians at Eddie's Attic, near her house. On our walk home, she paused on her street and said, "I have something for you." She reached inside her jacket and pulled out the tiniest little box. I opened up the little box and inside was a little yellow glass seahorse with an orange fringey mane. She said, "See? It's just like you with red hair." She was darling like that. So endearing. Thinking of things. And yes, I was always impressed. It didn't take much to win me over, even though she still kept trying anyway. She always did sweet things for me and that made us take our pace a little fast. If I could repeat the whole thing, I would slow it all down and get to know her better before jumping right in and making her my girlfriend before spending time with her during daylight hours.

Somehow I really thought she was going to be "it." The big one. The next, perfect love of my life. Something better than Mary to make it all worth it. So it shouldn't have been surprised me when one month later, while I was on vacation with some friends in Charleston, Lauren had the perfect opportunity for her unresolved ex to come back to town and take her away from me. It always happens like that. The exes always come back and take them away. The exes are always the ones to do the breaking of my heart. Because I love these people, you see, who have such big and wounded, unresolved hearts themselves.

So when I returned to town, Lauren called me in the morning at work and cried into the phone and broke my heart into pieces. I pictured her beautiful hair and pretty pretty face and all the little gifts she brought me, all that extra thoughtfulness and how I would never see her again. How she would never think of me again and make tiny little ways to make my day compltely perfect. Never again would anyone ever try to make me feel that special. And I put on a shiny veneer, used my chipper voice and said it was no big deal. It was all fine. Later that week, I sold my first novel to Simon & Schuster. And in a funny turn of events, the week that book arrived all bound and printed (a year and a half later), was the same one that my heart got sturdily broken again, for the third and final time.

After that last one, of course, I packed it all up and no matter how much anyone tried to make my day special with tiny little thoughtful things they'd do, I never let any of it affect me again. None of it got inside.