actually, i remember catching a lot of shit for this when i ran it by a friend of mine.

"you don't bring your ex flowers, j. ever."
"well i never bought her flowers when we were dating, it was just a pun i couldn't resist..."
"never. ever. never, ever bring your ex flowers."
"it was harmless. it was cute, dammit. she shouldn't have thought anything of it. i wasn't leading her on..."
"never. ever. never, never, ever, ever...."
"whatever. i mean, what's the use of being friends if you can't be fucking friends?"

see, she asked me to pick up some flour on the way there.

how was i going to avoid that?

this is another serious question: how long after a break-up is it considered acceptable to turn down sex on the basis of preferring friendship?

because we were around two and a half years since the breakup, and it had been something like a year since we'd last had sex (she was actually pregnant for the bulk of the second year). the last couple of times we hung out, it hadn't come up. in hindsight, i guess they were more normal types of dates - coffee meetings, walks by the water - but i didn't really feel that way, i just felt like i was hanging out with a friend and connecting. & there was the awkward dinner with her family like two years after we broke up, when her older sister actually seemed to think we were back together. maybe it was closer to happening in her mind than in mine.

it was just wrong, to me. i preferred her as a friend, at that point, and didn't want to muddy things. but, she was clearly shocked and things were never quite the same.

am i not right on this, though? isn't two and a half years enough time to acceptably refuse sex without it damaging a friendship?

this is a serious question, though: how long after you break up with somebody do you start closing the door when you use the bathroom? because that's not even casual sex. leaving the door open while defecating is strictly a relationship privilege.

six months didn't bother me much.

but, after three years, i was starting to wonder what her long term plans with me really were.

no. stop. listen....

when your previously live-in ex-girlfriend insists on showing up at your new apartment with her young daughter, almost four years after you've broken up, there is no level of naivete that masks the scouting intent behind the operation and no use in fooling yourself into thinking otherwise.

and, when you stop by her place a year later to inform her you're finally officially going back on drugstore hormones, it's hard to believe that she really has any true justification to get upset about it, after everything that's happened over the last five years. that's just base resentment.

no. i wasn't a "nice guy". that's not even close to the reality of things.

example: i insisted that we split the bill, at all times. that's not "nice guy" bullshit. it's actually strictly and brutally enforced egalitarianism.

in fact, i never bought her anything, and i would have been offended by the suggestion that i should have, as though i could have bought her affections or should have wanted to. fuck that...

in reality, i was actually female-identifying for the bulk of the relationship. i spent a lot of energy into trying to make a girl-on-girl dynamic functional. that's what i wanted out of the situation, and has a lot to do with why i was less reactive to her escapades with other men than i could have or should have been. in the long run, i wasn't going to be her boyfriend or her husband - i was going to be her girlfriend or her wife. if she was going to insist on being bisexual, i'd have to get used to that.

in fact, a lot of the guys she fucked around with - including my friends - were into the "nice guy" schtick far more than i ever was. they were the ones with steady jobs and cars and traditional concepts of things and stuff. i was usually unemployed. and, if you want to get into the freudian bullshit, you'll note that i was actually the badass tranny anarchist she went back to over and over again - until i ultimately rejected her. they were offering emotional support for all the conflicts we were constantly in - and we fought. hard.

the scenario was complicated, and i had my own prerogatives. it was a long time ago, and doesn't really matter (although this will eventually come out in the alter-reality, years from now). but, just, don't get it into your head that i was playing the nice guy and got fucked over by it - that's not even close to the reality of it, or even close to what happened when i walked away from it, in the end. we were explosive and dangerous and dysfunctional, and everything that happened was a corollary of that.

remember this point as it will reassert itself in the alter-reality repeatedly: a big part of the dynamics of things is that she had a very strong maternal drive (she ended up with two kids and a daycare job) and i wanted nothing to do with that. and, she told me she wanted kids, but i thought she meant after she graduated university and got a head start on a career, not, like tomorrow. we could talk about that later, right? but, she wanted to talk about it right the fuck now.

if i actually was playing the role of the nice guy, i'd have probably impregnated her like she wanted, and we'd probably have stayed together for years longer than we did. i may have even settled her down. i didn't want that...

....and years later, when all doubt had passed, when all rationalizations had ceased, she eventually resented me so much for not wanting that that she couldn't even talk to me anymore.

the actual role i was playing was the feisty egalitarian lesbian feminist femme punk, and i could be a fucking bitch about it when i got pissed off, too.