I am, afterall, only 61.75 inches tall...

Before The Brit rode in on his armored Mini Cooper and rescued me from The Battlefield that is dating, I’d dated several “characters.” This, much to the dismay of my mother who would twist her face in a pretzel of incredulous disapproval upon mention of the subject, particularly when I would, quite tastelessly, compare the ritual of dating to an afternoon of shopping for shoes: One has to try on several pair sometimes before finding the right fit. Gasp!! You see, when she married my father at the tender, unripened age of 16, he was the only boy she’d ever been on a date with. And a chaperoned date, at that. So, one might understand how this whole Dating Thing was beyond her comprehension. And, as such, why she would frequently remind me that farmers rarely bought the cow when they could get the milk for free.

Thank God I was a sharp kid and didn’t take her literally. Otherwise, I might have ended up estranged and confused. On a dairy farm.

No. I stayed away from those perverted farmers and went straight for the perverted doctors. Within weeks of starting my residency, I’d spotted him. Dr. Ferrari. He was good looking. Smart. (I mean, presumably, right? He went to med school, after all, so he couldn’t be completely devoid of grey matter.) ( Presumably.) And upon our first few encounters in the ICU, he seemed to have just the right touch of confidence. You know the kind…that which teeters on the cusp of arrogance, juuuuuust enough to be mysteriously sexy without actually being arrogant.

It was a quick beginning. But after I’d tried the shoes on a few times, I came to the brisk conclusion that I’d leave them at the store after all. Not that they weren’t GREAT shoes. They were. The fantastically naughty and spontaneous kind. However, I realized that that there was no teetering on the cusp for this guy. No, Dr. Ferrari had long ago fallen off the teeter totter, down the slippery slope of his silver spoon, over the gargantuan cliff next to his privileged house on a hill, and into a cavernous pool of smug self-righteousness and trite entitlement. Conversations with him revolved around him. His collection of Versace ties. His boundless affection for the LA lifestyle he someday hoped to live, you know, in between all the clubbing he’d do. His reputation for being a player…the seventy-some women who he’d already conquered. His platinum colored convertible Porsche 911, which, I was frequently reminded, was simply a stepping-stone to the car he was truly meant to drive. A Ferrari. Of course.

It got boring. (The conversation, not the shoes.) I thought after about a week it would fizzle out. He’d move on to some other cow and I’d move along to the next shoe store. But he kept calling. Started getting all sentimental. And serious! At first I found it humorous. Much in the same way I’d find it humorous if my mother decided to pursue her previously stifled passion for the kazoo as an orchestra instrument. Which she hasn’t by the way (we’d never stifle such a dream) but really, it would elicit the same hampered laugh and the same “you’re not serious are you?” But alas, Dr. Ferrari was serious. And quite persistent. So, gingerly and with my udders on guard, I humored him and continued to date him.

It was during this time that I came to learn that beneath what I had initially thought was a shallow pool, was, in fact, another even shallower pool. Honestly. The clubbing was fun at first, but after a couple months of juggling it with an 80-hour work week, it got old. As did the Ferrari talk, which was tediously perseverative. Especially when I found out that he wasn’t even paying for his current ride, his physician parents were. In fact, his parents were paying for everything. His house with a view. His medical education. His Versace ties. All of it. Having come from a family that had never owned a home, one that lived paycheck to paycheck, and having put myself in tremendous debt to educate myself, it was safe to say that we came from two different walks of life. Furthermore, he was admittedly getting ancy with the whole Monogamy Thing. Dr. Ferrari was successfully ruining his conquistador reputation by hanging out with the same chic. And one that wasn’t a Hollywood blonde, at that. This was ok, though, as I’d concluded that I’d enjoyed the shoes for long enough.

Our break-up discussion was uncomplicated, as they tend to be when a cow attempts to talk to a used pair of shoes in a shallow pool. I gave him a brief soliloquy about how I thought we simply came from polar opposite backgrounds and would never understand each other. I poured on, too long in retrospect, about how, since he’d never really struggled for anything in his life, he’d never truly get me. That I needed someone who could relate. Someone more sensitive. And that he could stand to be a little bit more thoughtful to other people and their feelings.

When I was done, I shifted my gaze from my fidgeting hands to his face. He stared back at me, blankly. Lips pursed. I waved my hand in front of his vacant eyes, no doubt interrupting the mental scrolling he was doing through the list of clubs he might hit up later that night. He snapped out of his silent social planning and looked at me with eyes that said, “Right. You done then?”

Not quite. One last thing. So as not to be accused of not allowing him to give me an equal amount of criticism, I asked him if there was anything he thought I needed to work on. Any weaknesses he might see in me that I might improve for my next relationship.

A great number of vacuous moments went by. He sat back on his leather couch (parents paid for that too), let out a big cumbersome sigh, bit the inside of his cheek and allowed his eyes to drift up and to the left…thinking thinking thinking.

“Well?” I said.

He looked back at me, slowly and reluctantly. And then he uttered the words that have since gone down in history as the most ridiculous and most quoted phrase of any ex of mine: “Well…I have often thought you were quite short.”

[Exited stage right, laughing out loud.]

-La Cubana Gringa