| The execution wasn’t exactly super but you had to love the concept for My Super Ex-Girlfriend. Uma Thurman as a superhero who gets dumped by her boyfriend and exacts superhero-style revenge. Since most of us don’t have superhero powers at our disposal to exact our revenge, it was a wonderful way to fantasize what we could do if we did. Sort of like Kill Bill for the badly burned and broken-hearted.
I know it’s not exactly mature, and the only thing it usually accomplishes is to make you look like a psychotic freak, but still, there’s something satisfying about creating a dramatic ending.
Like the time I stole my boyfriend's mother's car in the middle of the night back in high school when he ditched me. I’ve mellowed since then — a couple of cordless phones thrown in the heat of a moment is about as, uh, expressive as I've let myself get in the last few years. Oh, and I managed to score a few drama points in one relationship, when, after living together for less than two months, he came back from a weekend away to find me gone. That was kinda fun.
But I knew some of that fighting spirit had left me when I managed to quell my desire to sneak over in the middle of the night and dump sugar in his gas tank.
A fellow drama queen and I were recently lamenting the passing of our days of good knock-down-drag-'em-out break-up scenes. We're both with way reasonable guys these days, the kind you can't even pick a fight with. It's quite a challenge when you're used to thriving on conflict in relationships. Stirring up trouble is such a surefire way to keep things exciting – it'll even stand in for passion in a pinch. Alas, I fear it is a good thing, all this reasoning and not getting defensive. As much as dramatics make you feel alive, they can really wreak havoc on a relationship.
And throwing each other's belongings out onto the street every six months just isn't very practical.
Mind you, gathering the contents of their closet into the middle of the kitchen floor and dumping the entire contents of the fridge on them, as a friend of a friend did still makes me grin.
Because when you've been burned badly enough, you just can't help but indulge in a little dramatic revenge. Especially if the bastard deserves it. And as far as I'm concerned, infidelity is asking for it.
I might have told the story here before about the time I plopped a high-school-cafeteria Sloppy Joe on a girl's head because she'd slept with my boyfriend. Very mature of me to go after her, don't you think? No doubt, my boyfriend was merely an innocent bystander and the little slut, with her big boobs and long — of course – blond hair obviously threw herself at him.
I got him back too, though. Fought fire with fire. I left him at a party one night and went home with someone else. Mind you, after this guy and I had our little tryst, we got on his motorbike so he could gallantly sneak me home in the middle of the night, only to find the gas tank empty. My boyfriend later confessed, that in a fit of jealousy, he'd come over and siphoned the tank.
A friend of mine recalls a particularly momentous lashing out when she was seeing a guy who suddenly stopped returning her phone calls. They were finally supposed to go out one night and he didn't show up. Just didn't show up! After paging him several times, she finally reached him on the phone. He said he couldn't talk and was all a-giggle, as if someone was tickling him, she retells.
So she did what any calm, rational thinking person would do. She jumped on her bike and rode to his place in the pouring rain. He came to the door still putting on his shirt.
"He was hemming and hawing when I asked why the hell he lied to me. Just then, I heard giggling from up above on the balcony. There was his ex (who he complained about and who treated him like shit, she might add) wrapped in a blanket on the balcony. I slugged him in the face and left."
What can I say; sometimes actions truly are better than words.
Of course, actions can go too far. Like the time an ex came over to my apartment drunk, broke down the front door and, when I wasn't home, managed to get into my upstairs neighbour's place, where he passed out on her bed.
Which is a basic rule when it comes to dramatic endings: anything that requires police intervention is probably a little too dramatic. |
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