Boyfriends

My comforts this week that have kept my head above water have been finding old stuff I forgot I owned and my "boyfriends". I started referring to my two guy friends, Mike and Liam, who I spend the most time with lately, as my boyfriends because when I was getting ready to go over to Mike's house last night (after seeing The Dark Knight Rises with them the night before), Tony asked me, "Are you dating them?".
I am not dating two men simultaneously. I leave that kind of thing to people who are better at multi-tasking. I am not dating anyone, in fact. I just find it funny that he had to ask, and even funnier that he had zero disapproval in his tone when he did. In Tony's book, it would be a good sign if I did anything with anyone right now. He would probably approve of it if I told him I was about to let 10 guys run a train on me. He might tell me to use protection, but that would probably be his only input.
I like pretending that I have two boyfriends. It makes it seem, to myself only, that I am winning. I know there is no winning in a break-up, that we're both losers and I'm the bigger one because Gino ended it. Still, pretending I could win gives me back the little bit of confidence I have been lacking for so long. I was never confident in myself while I was married to Gino. I always considered him to be above my station in terms of attractiveness, a fact I told him more than a few times. He did not do much to boost the little bit of confidence I had when his response was, "Yeah, but I've never been with any girl who was really good-looking."
He reminded me often that I was the opposite of his type, and for a while I did try to resemble girls he was attracted to, with darker hair and the closest approximation I could get to a tan. I did this willingly, of course, to try to pique his interest, not because he asked. He did not treat me poorly, exactly, but he neither did he treat me like I was anything special. It hurt later on when I was talking to Liam and Mike about it, explaining that I was still so into Gino, even after seven years together. It pains me still to know that not only was he just not attracted to me anymore, but that he doesn't even like me. It is unfair like an unrequited crush is unfair in that you cannot argue with what someone feels.
Tony remarked a few times, when I was still married, that he didn't know me anymore, that marriage had changed me into someone who apologized all the time and was needlessly subservient. I denied it, thinking he couldn't possibly know what my marriage was really like, but of course he knew. I am the only one who didn't know. My subservience, my need to please, was totally unnecessary. I tried so hard to be a great wife that I failed to notice, for the past few years, at least, that he couldn't care less what kind of wife I was because he didn't want a wife anymore.
Now that I am preparing to move into my tiny bachelorette apartment, I have started to really attack the storage unit I share with my ex and make sure I have all of things I will need. I found most of what I thought I would, and was surprised to feel so much attachment to such commonplace items as a wooden spoon or a pair of sneakers. It is overwhelming to see so many items that I can attach significance to collected in one place. In a huge pile of clothes, I found the shirt Gino was wearing the first night we hooked up. We never had a proper first date, but we did have drinks before we went to his place, so I suppose it counts. In the same pile, I found the suit he wore in our wedding, a navy, pinstriped Calvin Klein that made him look like he was born in a suit. Under the pile was a plastic bin containing his and my costumes from three Halloweens ago. He was the Joker and I was Harley Quinn. I will miss being with someone who was such a kid with me, who had no qualms about dressing up as a comic book character unironically. We were both kids, I see now. We never grew up because we were caught in limbo and never had to be serious about anything. One of the good things about being single now is that I never have to worry again about how mature, or immature, he is. He can be exactly the way he wants to be, whomever that is, and I can be whomever I am.