An Unexpected Guest

by Gwen Cooper — May 14, 2007

When I first moved to New York from South Beach, Florida, my first real New York boyfriend was a man named Jason. Jason was extraordinarily good-looking but arguably had little else to offer. He was intermittently employed as trade-show-booth salesman while attempting to get his fledgling model-and-talent agency off the ground. Because he was always broke and had a daughter from a previous girlfriend in another city to support, he eventually moved into my apartment and I paid the rent. This arrangement came to a rather unpleasant end when I discovered that he'd inadvertently impregnated an ex-girlfriend (not the mother of his other child--a different woman) while living with me.

I believe my exact words at the time went something like, "One unintentional pregnancy is an accident. Two, and it's time for a trip to the vet."

As I said, the ending of our relationship was rather unpleasant. To add to the hard feelings on his part, our break-up soon contributed to his retiring in obscurity from New York altogether, as he was unable to afford to live here on his own. It had been about five years since the last time I'd seen him.

But I did a book reading in Manhattan the other night and there he was in the audience. I can only assume that he still reads New York papers in his Pennsylvania exile, and thought it worth his time to make the trip and attempt to rattle me.

I ignored him successfully until, after I was introduced, the crowd applauded and he booed (although I was quite gratified to see that he'd become considerably balder in the past five years). A few people shot him dirty looks, but book-reading crowds are by and large very civilized, and no additional ruckus was created. At least, not until after the reading was over and people came over to the table that had been set up for me to sign copies of the book.

I'll grant that he waited his turn very patiently, and was practically the last person in line by the time he got up to the table. "I'm not here to buy a copy of the book," he told me. "I'm just here to say I hope it tanks."

"I'm a professional writer," I replied, "and what you're doing right now is interrupting me while I'm working. Do I come down to where you work and slap the d--k out of your mouth?"

His face turned red, and I paused to enjoy the moment, but when he started to respond, I cut him off with, "I'm sorry but, as you can see, I have a very busy schedule of never thinking twice about you." At this point Robert, who always has my back, and a couple of our friends saw to it that Jason found the front door of the bookstore.

I've blogged before about vaguely dreading any possible encounters with ex-boyfriends at a book reading. This, quite honestly, is the last one that I would ever have expected. I can't exactly say that it was fun. But it wasn't as bad as it could have been, either. In fact, I've been feeling rather good about the whole thing.

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, recently published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen Cooper's posts in "The Dating Life," click here.