ROUND ONE: HAPPY HOOKERS vs. HAPPY FAMILIES

J's story: Just over two years ago, I asked my girlfriend to marry me. I loved her - she was a sweet girl, helped my family a lot when my mother had gone through chemo the year before. But now my mother was cured and I asked her to marry me when I took her on a 2 month trip through Europe. She said yes and we returned to the states. I had a job in Atlanta and she had school in DC - so I turned down the job in Atlanta and moved with her to DC so she could get her postgraduate degree in Peace Studies (Peace Studies!!!)

Anyway, things were going well. We'd been in DC for a few months and I'd found a pretty good job after a long search - I liked it, at least, and it paid well. But then one day in March I got a call from my family - my mother's cancer had come out of remission. It was a bad day. I was distracted enough at work that one of the schizophrenic girls (I worked in mental health) stabbed me with a pen, right in my neck. It hurt like hell.

So I went to pick up my girlfriend. She was working nights at the Spy Museum and going to school in the daytime. So I swung by the museum to see my fiancée. It turns out that she didn't work there - she wanted to come to DC not because of school but because she thought it would be fun to be a call girl. Later, she asked me "What could be more karmically nice than giving orgasms to lonely old men?"

So I moved out - she decided that meant she could keep the $1000 deposit I'd put down on our apartment. But she was still mad that I'd ducked out with 6 months left on the lease. So she sent my mother letters hoping that 1. cancer was spreading and 2. it is fatal (for both of us).

My girlfriend these days wonders why I have a fear of commitment...


L's story: I was going out with awful ex number two for four years and slowly drifting towards marriage when my younger sister came to live with us. Within a month the ex and I at loggerheads and after a protracted process we called it quits. ONE WEEK after we broke up I went on holidays to get drunk and fuck backpackers I came back to the news that my darling sister and my darling ex had "got it on" and were now expecting a bundle of joy.

Said bundle is due on my birthday.

This was AFTER I had acquired Ghana's national debt to furnish the house that she and I would be living in together.

They now live in the suburbs together. Apparently I have an attitude problem and it was my fault that it happened because I went on a holiday.

The final kick is that I was so disgusted in terrible Ex's behaviour that I destroyed the Limited Edition Joey Ramone Action Figure and The Misfits Coffin Shaped Lunchbox that he gave me.

I really regret that now but he still sucks.


simon hb says: Instinctively, it would seem that the first entry doesn't have very much to complain about - your girlfriend's a hooker? So, basically, you've been getting something for free that other people are prepared to pay for? Plus you don't have to worry about that awkward leaving cash under the clock or whatever.

On the other hand: your ex taking up with your sister is surely flattering? It's like saying "I really dig your DNA, I just don't quite like the way it's working there." Obviously, being asked not to visit your sister any more hurts, but that sort of thing happens in all the best families, exes or no exes.

So, the winner then: entry one, with extra marks for the mother-directed bile.

simon hb does No Rock and Roll Fun when he should be working; he was once dumped in favour of someone who believed Janis Joplin was not only still alive, but was a man. Upon returning home, he tried to play The Smiths until he realised it wasn't that bad and downgraded to The Wedding Present.