Dana

Her attitude of snobbery and superiority is why my family and friends hated her so much. Like the dumbasses blissfully ignorant to government corruption and crony capitalism, Dana was the type of girlfriend that caused drama and friction with your friends and family if you disagreed with anything she said or believed in, or if your demeanor did not correlate with her ridiculous standards. For example, one humid summer Friday night a couple of years back, me, her, Nathan, his girlfriend at the time, and Josh and Cassie were out at an Irish Pub in Midtown Manhattan. It was crowded, the music was ear-splittingly loud, and we were packed like sardines in the far corner of the bar near the pinball machines, blocked from accessing all restrooms and corridors by an overabundance of drunks dancing and singing. My friends and I were in a happy mood, but Dana, of course, was cranky for the sake of being cranky. As the minutes passed, the constant frown on her dolled-up face started to make my friends nervous, and the collective mood amongst the group transitioned from jovial to apprehensive. Our attempts to perk Dana up were met with awkward silences, and with each failed attempt, sweat on my back and arm pits became more profuse and my heart rate accelerated to red-line-like proportions. To attempt to calm her down and reduce the tension between her and my friends, I complimented her on her recently-dyed auburn hair and her newly-purchased black halter top with dark skinny jeans and black boots. She rebuffed me. Dana has a little extra baggage on her 5’1 body, but she always cries that she looks like she weighs 500 pounds and can’t get out of bed in the morning without assistance. Josh made a last-ditch effort to break up the tension, and it backfired in the worst possible way. He volunteered to buy a round of shots of rum for the group. Dana, once she realized what Josh was doing, began screaming at the top of her lungs, making sure the entire pub could hear her voice over the music and random chatter. She moaned and wailed about how we were too old to be taking shots and how such behavior was ridiculous and juvenile, among other inane and ridiculous things. None of us, especially me or Nathan or Josh, wanted to hear it. At the time, we were 25 years old. Not 45. Not 65. Twenty-fucking-five! Four years removed from reaching the legal drinking age! An entire lifetime away from not legally being able to taste alcohol! All bar patrons within a 20-foot radius of our group stopped what they were doing and fixed their eyes on Dana. Her dark blue eyes seemingly popped out of her round face like an arrow being shot through a brick wall, and her screeching voice reached a decibel level equivalent to a revving airplane engine. The sight of random onlookers staring at us, laughing at us, and taunting us mortified me unlike any feeling of trepidation I had ever felt before. My friends not only were spooked by Dana’s wrath, but they were also irritated by her arrogance. I pulled her aside not only to scold her for embarrassing me, and to stress to her that my friends did not appreciate her nasty attitude. Naturally, she responded thusly: screaming “go fuck yourself” while nose-to-nose with my face, residual saliva spraying all over my cheeks and eyes, and then she stormed out of the bar into the unbreathable humid August evening air to sit on a filthy street curb so she could soak in enough sweat to increase the water content of the rain puddles below her and bawl her fucking eyes out. If I remember correctly, she sat out there until about 3 in the morning. So, for about three or four hours, I’m not exactly sure which, she forced me into the unenviable position of playing peacemaker, psychologist, and the loving, forgiving boyfriend all at once. My clothes soaked in sweat, and I smelled like I had just gone swimming in a dumpster while I was standing above her, trying to negotiate with her to prevent committing suicide or whatever warped thoughts swirled through her head. Eventually, when Dana composed herself, we all returned to Penn Station and waited for the first train back to New Jersey at 4:50 AM, and she slumped herself down on the dirty marble floor and pressed her back at a 45-degree angle against an ice-cold pillar. She refused to make eye contact with me, and she wore a frown that even a wolf would be envious of. Unlike the weather outside, the mood in the train station and subsequent train ride home was frosty. No one said a word to each other the remainder of the night. And the frostiness didn’t thaw in any way whatsoever from that day forward. My friends lost the last semblance of respect they had for her that night, and refused to hang out with her or speak with her after that. It made me upset, but I completely understood. That night was one of the worst of my life, and I consider it the day I identify as the turning point of our relationship. For the longest time thereafter, I had the cumbersome task of balancing a social life with my friends with a spousal life with Dana. And I can tell you without a hint of reservation: it sucked.