Brenda Janowitz: Scot on the Rocks

I bet that that tiny little man in the elevator didn’t have a gorgeous Scottish boyfriend to go home to. Or, actually, maybe he did. He was wearing really, really nice shoes.

But I did. I walked in the door to my apartment, starving to death (because, let’s face it, I’m totally uncivilized), and before I even had a second to put down our dry cleaning, my gorgeous Scottish boyfriend broke up with me.

Normally, my life isn’t this complicated. You see, I’m a simple girl with simple hopes. Up until two weeks ago, all I really wanted in life was for my boyfriend Douglas to buy an engagement ring. And he did! He just didn’t give it to me. But I was fine. Even though the breakup was difficult, I remained very dignified.

Well, not so much dignified as a screaming crying mess. But it’s not as if I embarrassed myself or anything. Unless you’d call throwing yourself at the tails of someone’s suit jacket embarrassing. Which, luckily for me, I do not. We had a very mature conversation, really, if you think about it. I sweetly said, “Please don’t go! Please don’t leave me!” Okay, so maybe I was screaming it at the time, but you get where I was going with that one.

“I’m sorry, Brooke,” Douglas said. “It’s not you. It’s me. You are an amazing girl. You have so much to offer. It’s just that this doesn’t feel right. It’s just not the time for us.”

Now isn’t that mature? So, I answered him in kind.

“And it is the time for you and that — that — bimbo? What the hell is her name?”

“Beryl.”

“That’s not even a naaaame!” I bellowed.

“Brooke, let’s not get hysterical,” Douglas said. Hysterical? I was, like, so not hysterical. “Can’t we make this friendly? Can’t we try to still be friends?”

“Okay. You’re right. Friends.” See how mature I was being?

“Right then,” he said, sounding very Scottish. How I loved that accent. “I’ll be going.”

This may have been the part where I lunged for the tails of his suit jacket and he then dragged me about twenty feet to the door.

“No!” I was screaming. “No, please, no!” Okay, yes, now that I’m telling you about this, I distinctly recall being dragged across the floor screaming, “Don’t go!”

Oh, please. As if you never did that, too.

As a last ditch effort, I cried, “You can’t do this! Please don’t go! It isn’t right!” In an instant, his expression changed. I’m getting through to him, I thought. I lightened my viselike grip on the tails of his suit jacket.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t go. It isn’t right.”

I shook my head in agreement and breathed a sigh of relief. As visions of wild, passionate makeup sex floated through my mind, he said, “After all, I own the apartment.” And with that, he opened the door.

I should never have let go of the tails of his jacket.

Really, I blame the breakup on Trip’s wedding. That’s when everything started to go downhill between Douglas and me. And what’s worse, everyone I know thought that I shouldn’t have gone to the wedding in the first place. Somehow, everyone who knew me just knew that Trip’s wedding would be the end of Douglas and me. (Except little old me, of course.) I really hate being a foregone conclusion.

When I told my mother that I was going to Trip’s wedding, she said, “Trip’s wedding? Trip who?” (As if Jewish girls from Long Island know that many men named Trip.) “Trip from law school Trip? What woman, in her right mind, would want to go to that?”

Vanessa, my best friend from law school, initially RSVP’d no to the wedding, since she assumed that I wouldn’t want to attend. When she found out that I wanted to go, she later called Trip to tell him that her “big case” had settled and that she and her husband, Marcus, would be there — but not before asking me approximately 472 times if I “wanted to talk about it?”

And when I told the partner I worked for at my firm that I would be out of town for a four-day weekend to take my boyfriend to L.A. to go to Trip’s wedding, even he asked me, “Why the hell would you want to do that?”

I could have sworn that I even saw my therapist look at me sideways when I told her that I was going to my ex-boyfriend’s wedding.

Okay, so I understand that this isn’t exactly your typical “girl goes to wedding” kind of situation. But, just because Trip is my ex-boyfriend from law school doesn’t mean that I care more about this wedding or am more nervous about this wedding, or that this wedding is any different from any other wedding in any way at all! Because it’s not. Trip’s wedding is just another wedding. And Trip is just another friend of mine. Even if he is my ex-boyfriend.

What’s an ex-boyfriend anyway? Everyone has an ex-boyfriend. Everyone. I mean, even some lesbians I know have them. Nothing special about them, right? I don’t care any more or less about him just because he’s my ex-boyfriend. He’s just a person. And staying friends with your ex is a piece of cake. I barely ever think about him and how he may or may not have been my last chance at happiness in this cruel and unforgiving world.

Really. I have the satisfaction of having a great career and a great independent life filled with fabulous friends and, of course, even more fabulous shoes. I am such a woman of the new millennium that I can go work a full ten-hour day, keep in touch with friends through e-mail, do a few errands on the way to meet my friends for dinner, and then go meet cute guys over martinis at the bar after I eat. All in three-and-a-half-inch heels. I am such a woman of the millennium that I can do anything, even things that previous generations would have thought completely impossible — Betty Friedan be damned! I can even stay friends with an ex-boyfriend.

And it’s not like Douglas was jealous or anything. Douglas wasn’t really the type to ever get jealous. He was far too manly and European for such things.

When I told Jack, my best friend from Gilson Hecht, about Trip’s wedding, he simply said, “You and Douglas are going to break up.”

“What?” I practically screamed as I slammed the door to his office shut and sank into his visitor’s chair. His computer screen was turned slightly off center and I could see in the reflection of his window that he was working on his fantasy football league.

“Ignore me. I don’t even know what I’m saying,” he said, one eye still on his computer screen as he flipped it back to the brief he was drafting. “I think it’s great if you can go to your ex-boyfriend’s wedding. In fact, if we had dated and then broke up, I would fully expect you to come to my wedding.”

“We did date and break up,” I reminded him, picking up the silver paperweight from his desk and turning it slowly in my hands. It was engraved Congratulations on Your Graduation and signed With Love from all three of his older sisters.

“One kiss does not constitute us dating and breaking up,” he said, baby blues now burning into me, as he brushed his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes. This particular conversation always made Jack nervous for two reasons. The first was that he was the one who called things off, and being the gentleman that he was, he never liked to do anything that would make a woman unhappy. The second was that he hated the implication that he would ever act in such an unprofessional manner by running around kissing associates who were junior to him.

I love bringing this conversation up with him.

“You say potato….” I said as he snatched the paperweight from my hands. I moved my attention to the sterling-silver picture frame that housed a photo of Jack and his parents at the swearing-in ceremony to the New York State Bar. It always struck me as so odd that Jack’s father was the only one smiling.