" I was twenty three and to me this man was unadulterated sophistication. So sophisticated was he, in fact, that I came off as très pedestrian when I burst into tears having discovered a pair of black silk lace underwear (not mine, natch) between his sheets."
Have You Ever Dated a Secret Jerk?
By Sarah Strohmeyer, Author of THE SLEEPING BEAUTY PROPOSAL
H
ave you ever dated a secret jerk? I certainly have.
A Secret Jerk is a man who looks like Prince Charming on the outside and is little more than a snake charmer on the inside. My Secret Jerk was ten years older than I, then a mere twenty three, and I was dazzled by all his polished and academic affectations. Dazzled for three long years. (Later I would realize why he dated a woman ten years his younger, but back then I was too naive to know about such concepts as Adult Male Inferiority Complex.)
My Secret Jerk wore lots of tweed, listened to Thelonious Monk and - though chronically unemployed - pretended he was superior to me, the gainfully employed, because he was pursuing a PhD whereas I held a useless B.A.
He also boiled coffee the French way, owned a well-seasoned omelet pan that, God forbid, he never washed, waxed nostalgically about the Sixties and drove old BMWs he worked on himself. His floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were loaded with every wanker male author, from Freud to Mailer to Cheever.
Now, had I been older and wiser, I would have taken one look and headed for the door. But, like I said, I was twenty three and to me this man was unadulterated sophistication. So sophisticated was he, in fact, that I came off as très pedestrian when I burst into tears having discovered a pair of black silk lace underwear (not mine, natch) between his sheets.
He never said he was committed to me, he explained. What did I want anyway? Marriage? Surely, I couldn't be serious.
He and his black-lace-panty-twinkie finally broke up when I seared off my corneas and called him in desperation from the emergency room. Apparently, the two of them were supposed to go out that night (cult film noir) and I ruined their night of black turtleneck festivities by temporarily going blind. But she wasn't the first woman he cheated on me with and she certainly wasn't the last.
The basic problem with me, he said, was actually him: he was not that sexually attracted to me. Sure, I was fun and intelligent and made him laugh. (And I paid for EVERYTHING.) But I did not have that certain....whatever it is that makes women sexually irresistible.
The thing is, no one suspected this sliminess about my Secret Jerk. Everyone thought of him as intelligent and ethical, a real charmer. Yet, when I stop to think about how many times he surprised me with hideous “love trinkets” or how he insisted I go through psychotherapy before even considering whether to commit, I am baffled as to why I even stuck it out a month, let alone thirty six.
We finally broke up a year after I moved to Cleveland when we had this discussion: Would you stay committed if I became a quadriplegic?
Yes, it was one of those ridiculously stupid conversations only people with too much time on their hands have, but it quickly turned into a heated one. I said that of course I'd stay married to him no matter what his condition. He said he would be within his ethical rights to leave me and I should understand. Had I been closer than the 400 miles that separated us, I would have gladly made him a quadriplegic to test his theory.
The next day, I called up and broke it off. It was hard to do. It was hard like giving up cigarettes is hard: you know they're killing you, but you're so addicted, envisioning a life without them seems impossible.
A week later he called me up and proposed marriage.
I said, "Surely, you can't be serious."
And that was the end of three years of pain and self mortification, all of which taught me what NOT to look for in a man. Years later, I looked back to that time and wrote THE SLEEPING BEAUTY PROPOSAL. I created a Secret Jerk protagonist, Hugh, the boyfriend of my protagonist, Genie Michaels, who fakes her engagement when, after four years of a relationship, he suddenly proposes on national television to a woman he's been dating on the side. Genie is my vision of how I might have reacted to my Secret Jerk if I’d had more guts. But hey, at least something positive has now come out of the hurt I once suffered.
God, that felt good to write. Such a relief!
To ex-boyfriends and Secret Jerks…May they give us a lifetime of inspiration!
Okay...now who's yours?
Author Bio: Sarah Strohmeyer is the author of The Cinderella Pact (2006), and the newly released THE SLEEPING BEAUTY PROPOSAL
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