I once had a boyfriend for 6 years who I didn’t like. Yup. It’s true. I didn’t like him one bit, actually. People are always shocked to hear me say that about him but it’s the honest truth. Sure. There were times when I thought that maybe I liked him but in the end I realized that I only liked the idea of him. I liked having him as somebody to call my “boyfriend”.
My boyfriend’s name was Dick and I found him to be boring, not my type, and very cheap. (Note: His real name is not actually Dick but rather a name that I have carefully selected for him in order to help conceal his true identity.) In the beginning of our relationship I tried to break-up with him every Sunday. By Monday morning though we were typically always back together. He would usually try to redeem himself somehow by doing something really nice for me, like allowing me to have alone time in the bedroom so that I could watch my favorite TV shows in peace…without him.
As I mentioned, one of the most awful qualities about Dick was his cheapness. He never wanted to spend money on anything. We lived together for nearly two years in an apartment that I paid to have furnished on my own. He was constantly keeping an Excel spreadsheet that tracked expenses that he felt I owed him. And when his parents would send him money in a card that said, “Take Dean out for a special dinner”, he would pocket the cash. It’s safe to say that Dean had one cheap Dick on her hands!
Well of course we all know that in life, every dark cloud has a silver lining. Dick’s silver lining happened to be his very rich, older sister, Penny. (Note: Penny is not Dick’s sister’s actual name but rather a name that I have carefully selected for her in order to help conceal her true identity.) Penny was a blonde bombshell who had once worked as an Executive Assistant for highly successful CEO at a Fortune 500 Company. Penny must have been one damn good EA because soon after she started working for the CEO, he promoted her to become his second wife and the stepmother to his two children who were around the same age as Penny. As part of this “promotion”, she also got to live in a mansion, a souped-up BMW, and a whole slew of new credit cards with her name inscribed on them. Penny got the kind of promotion that every girl wishes for!
Dick and Penny, although they were siblings, couldn’t have been any more different. Dick saved every penny he could. Whereas Penny, who was married to a dick, liked to spend every pretty penny that she could. And let me just tell you that when Penny shopped, Dean was a winner! I got gadgets and gizmos a-plenty. And whozits and whatzits galore. Having Penny as my almost-sister-in-law was like celebrating Christmas everyday of the week. (Which is a pretty amazing thing for a Jew-ish girl like myself.)
At one point, Penny became obsessed with all things Burberry. And Penny’s obsession meant a $500 bag and two Burberry plaid scarves for Dean. Her Burberry obsession also meant two plaid scarves for Dick. (Sure, Dick did look slightly gay wearing his high-end scarves around the city but he would have worn pretty much anything expensive just so long as he didn’t have to pay for it himself.)
Soon after Penny’s obsession with Burberry was over, she moved on to Tiffany & Co. She was particularly fond of the Tiffany Blue colored packaging. And pretty soon, our apartment was filled with this packaging; lots and lots of this packaging. This wasn’t because Penny would send us endless amounts of gifts from Tiffany. Oh no. This wasn’t the case. She actually only sent us one gift from Tiffany; a $75 gift card for me, a $75 gift card for Dick, and a $150 gift card for the both of us to share (which really meant an additional $150 for Dick).
Penny shipped us the three gift cards in a huge box that she had delivered to Dick’s office. The box was large enough to hold a small child…and his car seat. I still remember that day when Dick and the box came home from work. The box was so large that Dick could barely get through our front door.
In the large box was a smaller Tiffany box with white ribbon tied around it. (The smaller of the two boxes was still quite large; this one big enough to hold a small child…minus the car seat.) Inside the smaller of the two boxes was one large Tiffany shopping bag. (Penny instructed me to use this bag to carry all of my groceries.) Inside the large shopping bag were three smaller blue Tiffany paper bags. (Penny instructed me to use these as lunch bags.) Inside each Tiffany blue “lunch” bag was a small box with white ribbon tied around it. And within each small box was a felt blue envelope…that held a gift card. So in a nutshell, Penny, shipped us 5 boxes, 4 bags, 3 felt envelopes and yards of white ribbon, all just to send us 3 gift cards. I think it’s safe to say that Penny was not a huge supporter of green spending.
Throughout my relationship with Dick, I received a Gucci handbag (which I traded-in for a hefty wad of cash), gift certificates to all of Penny’s favorite retail stores, and even an offer to pay for a boob job for me. (In an email to Penny one day, Dick had jokingly asked her if instead of sending us gifts from Burberry if she would mind funding a boob job for me instead.) I guess that with Dick being so cheap and all, Penny must have assumed that he was being serious. I had to actually email Penny to inform her that I liked my boobs just the way they were. To which she responded that I was, “very thin and beautiful! And that I should be proud to be a size ‘A – B’”. And then she finished her email to me with a quote from Bill Joel telling me, “Don’t go changing…”
Soon after my boob job discussion with Penny though, things did ‘go changing’. My relationship with Dick suddenly came to end. Dick dumped Dean. It turns out that in the end, Dick didn’t like me very much either. Or at least he had found himself a new girl who he liked better than me; a girl with much bigger boobs…but also a much bigger nose and ass.
It took me a bit of time to get over losing Dick. Not because I missed him but more because of what he represented in my life; having a boyfriend. It’s now been almost 4 years since Dick dumped me. And even though I know that I am much better off without having Dick in my life, I can’t help but to find it depressing that our failed relationship also cost me one pretty Penny.
