DEDICATED TO MY EX-GIRLFRIEND
“If you don’t have anything bad to say about a relationship, you shouldn’t say anything at all.”
— George Costanza
Coltrane Jones and Amber Sunshower are breaking up today. They’ve been dating for most of three years, living together for two, talking about marriage for one, and, for the last six months, they’ve been breaking up slowly, Chinese water torture slowly. A breakup of this sort, after so much time and so much dreaming and so much pain, is a shift of the tectonic plates of two lives. That’s why today, this warm, late-June Saturday afternoon, at a borrowed home in Soul City’s ritzy Honeypot Hill, the end of this long, momentous relationship is being marked by a Breakup Ceremony.
This is a relatively new custom in Soul City, but it’s been gaining in popularity over the past few years among couples that have been together long enough to have gained that plateau where people are watching and wondering if or when they’ll marry. When a breakup seems inevitable the couple will pick a date, invite their friends, and hold a public ceremony commemorating their end. The ceremony usually starts just as the sun is beginning to make way for evening. The couple emerges together, though not touching and usually not looking at each other. They are always well dressed so as to give off the appearance of doing well in that trying moment, though on many occasions it’s clear that one of the parties had been well dressed and then, consumed by the grief of finality or the grip of chemicals or both, proceeded to paw away at their suit or dress all the way to disheveledness.
They assemble in front of their friends, who are divided by affiliation — his friends on one side of the aisle, hers on the other. This is an important segment of the young ritual, giving members of the community a chance to choose a side, to silently declare their loyalty.
During the ceremony two preselected members of the audience come forward to say a few words about the couple (“I always knew you guys would never make it,” or “I told her to leave you nine months ago”). Then each member of the couple gets one sentence to vow, that is, to publicly state their main gripe with the other. “I vow that you are just too plain selfish,” or “I vow that you never really listened to me.” But both must say their vow at the same time so no one can say they didn’t get the last word. Then a photograph of the two is burned and dropped to the ground so the ashes can mix with the dirt and be lost forever. Attendees are invited to stomp on the spot where the ashes fall, symbolically pushing them down further. Then the group breaks into two parties. The men rumble off to a stripper-clogged rebachelorization party. Women retreat into a bridal shower without a bride, giving the newly single woman gifts she’ll need in her now man-less life (maybe a VCR, a health-club membership, a set of tools). The women’s event sometimes includes a black-leather-masked male who is whipped on his bare buttocks with a thick leather strap. This whipping often lasts hours, often draws blood, and, women say, is quite therapeutic.
Some from outside of Soul City are amazed at these ceremonies, amazed that a volatile separating couple can occupy the same space for the ten minutes it takes to conduct a Breakup Ceremony. But many in Soul City choose to have a Breakup Ceremony because of its cotillion aspect. The ceremony spreads the word that it’s over, freeing the two from many awkward questions, sending a tacit message to anyone who’s maybe been waiting for the relationship to dissolve. Body language speaks volumes, especially when standing beside that other person, and goes a long way toward improving one’s stock within the community and shifting the perception of fault, even though most who’ve attended more than one Breakup Ceremony know that the during-ceremony stoicness of most breaking couples owes much to large quantites of Mr. Valium and Dr. Jack Daniels.
Coltrane and Amber’s ceremony proceeded almost exactly according to plan. Almost. Their friends knew it would be difficult for the tumultuous pair to stand beside each other for those last ten minutes, and so they added a few touches to the ceremony in hopes of eliciting their best behavior. Reverend Hallelujah Jones was tapped to officiate, though really there was nothing for him to do besides stand there, barely five-foot-two and as fragile as a man made of aluminum foil, with a little curly gray hair clinging to the sides of his head and so much curly gray hair bursting from his ears he appeared to have the frayed ends of a Kleenex peeking out of them. He’d baptized nearly everyone in Soul City under thirty-five, including both Coltrane and Amber, and thus commanded a certain respect. But he was not enough to keep a Jerry Springer show from breaking out on this day.
Amber’s friends also added her mother, Peaches, to the program, giving her the job of walking up the aisle toward the couple at the end of the ceremony, taking her daughter’s hand, and escorting her down the aisle and away from Coltrane, symbolic of taking her back. Amber has never been married and thus never been given away, meaning the gesture did not really make any symbolic sense at all. The hollow symbol was merely window dressing for the concrete attempt to extract ten minutes of peace from the fiery pair.
At a few minutes to six the couple emerged from the back door of the borrowed country home, each on one side of Reverend Jones. Coltrane was impressively cool in a navy tailored suit with a mint-green silk tie, matching shirt, and pricey leather shoes. Amber looked luminous in a red Versace dress with a plunging neckline, her shoes frighteningly high brown Jimmy Choo open-toe slingbacks, her ears twinkling with diamond studs, her hair swept up and laced with miniature pink roses. At Breakup Ceremonies couples dress to arouse the jealousy of the other party (as if to say, look at all this you’re gonna miss), and to possibly arouse someone in the crowd because a Breakup Ceremony is always the start of an unspoken race. People in Soul City believe whoever starts their next solid relationship first is proven to be the more desirable and less troublesome member of the couple, ergo, the winner.
At the appointed time Coltrane, Amber, and Reverend Jones came out of the house, moved into view at the Reverend’s slow pace, and stopped at the top of the stairs. “We are gathered here today,” the Reverend said, “to witness the conclusion of a wonderful relationship between two wonderful people.” Amber leaned away from the Reverend, afraid his lies might earn him a thunderbolt. He offered a few more fabrications intended only to put the best possible bow on the bad situation, but his fictions fooled no one. At every Breakup Ceremony, during the cocktail reception that precedes the main event, people feel compelled to swap the most gory bits of gossip about the relationship and its failure, knowing this is the last chance to spread such information. It’s a sortof going-out business sale on gossip. After his final falsehood, the Reverend invited Amber’s best friend, Camilla Clothespony, to come and say a few words. She was supposed to be followed by Coltrane’s friend Huggy Bear Jackson and then Amber’s mom, Peaches, but Camilla already knew she would be the day’s final speaker.
It’s been said far too often that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But in so many cases that fury is a wet matchstick compared to the roaring blaze that is the fury of a woman scorned’s best friend. Camilla took her place at the foot of the steps and faced the couple. “If ever there were two people who should not be together it was these two,” she began with an acid voice. “You’re weak, spineless, pathetic, and ya know what, Amber lied: it’s not all about the motion of the ocean!” The Breakup Ceremony is the place to expunge one’s feelings about the breakup, and as the sole speaker from Amber’s community Camilla had every right to speak publicly of her anger. However, her toast, barely one sentence old, was already evidencing ire well beyond the appropriate. “And you know what she said? Sex with you is like math class! Very boring and filled with mistakes!” She was far beyond control now, eyes soaked, teeth clenched, a momma bear fierce in the face of an attacker. The crowd was paralyzed, torn between stopping her and enjoying the show. “And did you think,” Camilla yelled, looking right at Coltrane, her voice breaking from tears, “I would let you just walk away scot-free, you little rat? Amber, you would not listen to me during this so-called relationship, but now you’ll hear me when I show you what a lying little boy he is!”
Camilla whipped around and motioned for three women from the Amber side of the aisle to step forward. The three moved from the crowd and into the open, self-righteously stuck their hands on their hips, and made circles with their necks as if to say, Whatcha got to say now? Coltrane’s jaw dropped and his eyes sunk back into his head and his shock made it clear even to Amber that these were three women of whom Coltrane had carnal knowledge.
The Reverend called out, “Miss Clothespony, please! This is a day for closure!”
To which she shot back, “Oh, we gettin closure right now!”
And with that Coltrane dashed off into the house, trailed by Amber, her eyes burning with homicide, followed by Camilla screaming, “Get that rat!,” followed by the three neck-swiveling women, followed by most of Amber’s friends. Coltrane’s people stood their ground, seeing no way to save him from the beating of his life. As Coltrane raced through the house, zigging and zagging, breaking stuff and denting shins and tripping and falling and bolting up to sprint off, a single-file line of fire-eyed females chased him up the front stairs and down the back ones, nipping at his heels like a murderous high-speed conga line. Soon Coltrane found himself running through Vietnamish hallways that were a jungle of broken glass and grabbing hands and flying chairs and kicking legs and spitting fires, unable to find a path out of the house, every moment less and less able to avoid the swarming, bloodthirsty mob.
Later, at the hospital, Coltrane said he had no idea Camilla had planned to ruin the day (though Amber felt Camilla had done “the perfect sisterly thing”). He winced as a nurse tended to the cuts on his face and chest from being kicked by high heels and secured the cast on his twice-broken left arm.
“What happened to you?” the nurse said.
“Oh, I had a Breakup Ceremony.”
“What are you, stupid? What did you think would happen?”
“Well, I dunno. I guess I thought my Breakup Ceremony would be different.”
“I’ve been to maybe five Breakup Ceremonies,” she said, “and I don’t even know how the ceremony’s supposed to end because every single time someone goes postal.”
“Yeah,” Coltrane said. “I’m not really sure if these Breakup Ceremonies are such a good idea. My dad always said, ‘It’s cheaper to keep her,’ and I never really knew what he was talkin about cuz he was always broke. But now I get it.”