Best Boyfriend Ever

My best friend Ava and I have known each other for going on 15 years now. We met freshman year of college where she lived across the hall from me. We were destined to become best friends for so many reasons, but for the first month of school we would pass in the hallway and each throw the other a dirty look. I'm not sure why we did that and I can't even recall how we first started talking to each other, but we practically flunked out of freshman year because all we did was stay up all night talking and laughing. Cracking a book was pretty much out of the question.

Over the years, we've developed a completely different language that nobody else can understand. When we use words from our language in front of other people, they generally look at us as if we've sprouted fifth limbs. We call each other MODI, which stands for something we've never revealed to anyone else, but that name has also taken on a life of its own at this point and means so much more than it did originally. She and I laugh about how we're each other's Best Boyfriend Ever, since we've had our share of dysfunctional relationships and the one consistently good relationship we've both had is each other. Don't get me wrong, we don't have a romantic relationship, but we are definitely soul mates and I feel pretty sure we're going to end up in rocking chairs together at the nursing home someday. We laugh when we tell people that we fell in love when we were 18, and they inevitably look at us like we just stepped out of an alien warcraft.

Bizarrely enough, every boyfriend that we've ever had has been jealous of our relationship. The only fight that we've ever had in 15 years was over a boyfriend of Ava's that was so envious, he tried to drive a wedge in between us. He's history. I've had boyfriends who have asked me, "Why aren't we as close as you and Ava?"

Ava and I have been through a million and one different things together, and even though we don't live in the same city, we try to get together once a month or so. She's only a 50 minute flight away, so it's pretty convenient. Our weekends together always end up filled with adventures, late nights, and countless bottles of wine. Our livers and lungs hate us after our visits, but the weekends are so much fun that it's totally worth it.

Late last spring, Ava came to visit me for a weekend. At that time, Ex and I were still living together, and though I was already coming to terms with the fact that I was miserable, I had yet to find out about The Great Email Debacle. Wanting to hang out downtown and refusing to spend our weekend in Suburban Hell, Ava and I rented a hotel room in the city and spent the weekend there.

Ava and I had been planning to get tattoos of our nickname for years, and that Sunday afternoon we chose to do it. She had finally tracked down someone who could phonetically translate MODI into Chinese characters. It turned out that MO was one character and DI was another, so we chose to each get one, and when another 15 years passes, we'll each get the other.

Since Ava wasn't leaving until Monday, I called Ex on Sunday and invited him to come downtown and hang out with us for the afternoon. He asked what we were planning to do, so I told him about the tattoos and our plans to migrate afterwards to Outdoor Bar with great people-watching.

30 full seconds of silence ensued.

I said, "Ex, are you still there?"

"Yes."

"What's wrong?"

"I refuse to spend time in a tattoo parlor. I don't waste my time with lowlifes."

And then he hung up on me.

I turned to Ava and said, "Well, that went well. Let's go."

So we headed off to the tattoo parlor, got our tattoos, and I called Ex as we were walking out the door. I asked, "Are you going to meet us?"

"I'm already here. I've been at the corner of the tattoo parlor for over an hour. I can see you right now."

Creepy. But I said, "OK, well, we're heading to Outdoor Bar, so meet us there."

Click. He'd hung up on me again.

The afternoon was extremely uncomfortable. We were sitting at Outdoor Bar, Ex across from me and Ava next to me. I didn't know who had peed in Ex's Cheerios that morning, but he was all thunder and storm, barely saying a word. He didn't ask either of us to show him our tattoos. To make matters worse, I must have been throwing off some pheromones or something, because as Ex was brooding in his rage and pissing us both off that he was ruining the afternoon, I got hit on more than I have in the past 3 years combined. The guy next to us, who was in town on business from South America, started up a conversation and we ended up speaking in Spanish to one another. He asked me out in Spanish and I laughed, telling him that it was my husband who was sitting across from me. A girl approached a little while later and sat down next to me, saying, "I know this seems kind of creepy, but my friend thinks you're really hot and he's too shy to ask you out, so would you go over and introduce yourself?" Things like this kept happening all afternoon, and Ex was growing more and more..... actually, he was just growing, because when he gets mad I think he actually grows in height to about 10 feet tall. He was enraged. It was exacerbating an already uncomfortable situation, and I still couldn't figure out why Ex was so upset in the first place.

Ava and I went to the bathroom together, and she said, "MODI, I don't think I've ever been more uncomfortable in my life."

"Me neither. I'm so sorry to end the weekend like this."

"But it's funny how you keep getting hit on and it's making Ex so mad!" We both dissolved into laughter because it was so absurd that it was funny.

We arrived back at the house where Ex and I lived at around 9. Ava went to sleep almost immediately because we had to be up early to get her to the airport on time. I needed to check some emails, so I got on my computer. I spotted an email from a guy I'd met on a recent trip to Europe and saw the little arrow icon that indicates the message had been forwarded. I knew that I hadn't forwarded that email to anyone, so I went into my sent folder, confusion and rage beginning to grow.

The email had been forwarded at 1:42 PM. To Ex. That same day. When Ava and I were downtown.

I wasn't entirely sure that Ex had actually forwarded the email at first. I thought, "He didn't - wouldn't - really do that, right?" Ex was in the basement watching TV, so I went downstairs and asked him, "Ex, were you on my computer today?"

"Of course not. Why would I do that?"

"Are you sure that's your final answer?"

Ex began to cry. He said that he thought I was having an affair and he needed to find out. I told him he had no reason to think that I was having an affair. He wanted to know why the email he'd forwarded to himself was signed "big kisses." I told him that the guy who had emailed me was foreign and they kiss everyone, including other men. I again asked him why he would think I was having an affair.

He said, "How about that Spanish dude you were talking to today? Are you meeting him later? Is he better looking than me? And what about all of that being hit on? Do you enjoy it? Was it fun for you?"

I replied somewhat incredulously, "You're jealous, aren't you?"

He became enraged again. He shouted, "Yes, I'm jealous! I'm jealous of Ava, I'm jealous of the Spanish guy, and I'm jealous of Mr. European Big Kisses! And why did you go off of the birth control pill right before you went to Europe, hmmmm?" dripping with sarcasm and insinuating that I went off of the pill in order to have sex romps with European hotties. His argument made no sense at all because I have never wanted children, and Ex knows this very well.

I actually found this illogical argument funny. "Hellooo, Ex," I thought, "I went off of the pill because we haven't had sex in a year, so what's the point?" I stifled a laugh. I said, "Um, Ex, let's think about this. If I had wanted to have sex with European men, I would have stayed ON the pill."

His look of confusion, then thoughtfulness, then realization was priceless.

He didn't even address his insanely illogical accusation and said something that blew my mind. "But you never asked me for permission to get a tattoo! And you know what else, you never asked me for permission to go off of the pill, either!"

That moment crystallized for me in colors of rage, betrayal, and coldness swimming before my eyes. It was a feeling I can't quite describe, in which time seemed to slow and my thoughts were oddly and serenely concrete. I looked him square in the eye and calmly said, "Since when did you gain ownership of my uterus, or my skin, for that matter?"

Realizing that his suspicion of unfaithfulness was untrue and that the "permission" comments were way over the line, he begged for forgiveness and started punching himself in the head over and over. Frankly, I was frightened. In order to diffuse the situation and hopefully save him from a self-inflicted traumatic brain injury I said, "We'll work this out later. I'm going to bed."

The next morning, Ava took her bag outside and I backed the car out of the garage. I saw in my rearview mirror that Ex gave her a hug and said something. I could see that she looked puzzled. She got in the car and said, "MODI, the weirdest thing just happened. Ex just told me that it was the last time he'd see me because you were probably going to divorce him. What happened?"

I told her the story and said, "MODI, this is just one more reason why you'll always be my Best Boyfriend Ever."

So currently, I'm DI and my Best Boyfriend Ever is MO. Or perhaps I'm Beef and she's Broccoli or I'm Kung Pao and she's Chicken, since we have no way of knowing what these indelibly marked characters really mean. No matter, I'm grateful to have a best friend like her and I'm happy to be Kung Pao to her Chicken.