For all those who rue the day they kissed a writer in the dark

Not the Lorde summer we thought, but the Lorde summer we got.

FYI:

This post was in my drafts for a while, as I was reflecting on my own experiences with elite premium status as every ex-boyfriend’s favorite ex-girlfriend (as one does every February, when I started it).

A lot has transpired since then. So much so that excavating my drafts from the spring and winter has proven prescient, ominous, and entirely the type of thing people imagine Groundhog’s Day plotlines about. Looking back at my half-baked thoughts from then told me I was onto something…and now here I am, consing the quences.

Hindsight is 20/20, but the future as interpreted by the past makes for a very absent present. And the present is the only plane we have to work on. So we shan’t be wasting it! (All time-indicative wording has been changed to reflect the present.)

Also, I need to stop writing really long drafts and never posting them. So...

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A few months ago, a new Grimes song popped up on my new release algorithm playlist, entitled:

My first thought was, Girl this is not going to endear you in custody court. But then I thought: imagine being (allegedly) separated from your children by the richest and most powerful man in the world, who seems to be brainwashing them into [redacted] as he dismantles the government. Writing a kooky song about it is the least of it!

The next day, the song was retitled to:

Perhaps it was at the behest of Grimes’ legal team, but perhaps it may have been more likely motivated by the withering aftermath of a satisfying crashout that spurs some quick editing.

Having an awful ex is so common it’s almost boring. We’ve all dated the same people, it turns out: narcissistic, gaslighting, egomaniacs who don’t wash their hands before putting them inside you. Men are disappointing in so many banal ways today that you can barely take any of it personally.

But when one considers the canon of evil exes, Grimes may very well have the Moment. I mean, who knows what’s really going on between them, but I read the Marie Claire piece written by Musk’s first ex-wife years ago, and it seemed to be one of many yikes now in a connect-the-yikes determinations around that dude. On the other hand, it must feel pretty huge to have the world burning effigies (Teslas) in protest of that one evil ex.

The Ex-Girlfriend Experience

A year after that Marie Claire piece, I read Denise Grollmus’s Salon piece Snaphots from a Rock And Roll Marriage, in which she outlines, Slumdog Millionaire-style, all the items of sentimental value negotiated in her divorce from Black Keys’ Drummer Patrick Carney — who later married Michelle Branch, cheated on her as well (while she had just had their baby), and then CALLED THE COPS ON HER when she gave him a deserved slap about it. I cannot help but wonder if Branch read Grollmus’s piece and felt any trepidation, perhaps thought something like But that was so long ago, and people change…