In which I finally break up with Gomez, which I should have done a long, long time ago

After I met Primo in early November, I stopped calling or emailing Gomez. Yes, I know I should have broken up with Gomez immediately. It was poor form to leave him dangling, or, at the least, to be "involved" with two men at the same time, even if one of them was on another continent and the extent of our relationship after my return from Paris was a twice-weekly conversation in French from my cubicle while my co-workers pretended not to listen as I flipped through my French-English dictionary and then, exasperated, switched to English because really, who cares if they heard me talking to him about my division's soon to be disatrous (but not because of my efforts) SAP conversion?

He was the one saying all the "Oh mon amour I mees you I mees you" baloney. I wasn't saying that stuff because really, I was having some misgivings.

I was! I had lost my job, he wanted me to track down his born in New York ex-wife's birth certificate because he was worried she was Jewish, we completely disagreed on how children should be raised, and I had realized he had never had to work for a thing in his life.

I don't have a problem with inherited wealth (really, wouldn't it be nice if we all had inherited wealth and didn't have to work? how nice would that be?), but I also don't have a lot of respect - OK, any - for people who don't work.*

If you are lucky enough to have enough money that you don't have to work for it, then by golly, you better be doing something to make the world a better place. Yeah, you can party and gamble or whatever if you want - it's your money and your business what you do with it - but I don't want to be a part of it. I saw no evidence that his little hobby hotel was a legitimate business. Just a way to look like he was respectable.

So I stopped calling and emailing him.

And he stopped calling and emailing me.

This from a man who professed to loooooove me. I knew he was full of baloney. Who falls in love after just a few weeks?

So I finally had to break up with him. I was hoping he would go first. You know, a disgusted email saying, "Pah! You Americaine! I am done wiz you! I loaze you! You have no respect for me! I break wiz you, I break wiz you, I break wiz you!"

I know breaking up by email is tacky, but what was I supposed to do – fly to Morocco? Please. I had wasted all my frequent flier miles on the Paris trip. I sure wasn't going to waste any money on a millionaire who hadn't even bought me supper IN PARIS.

I didn’t want to call him, either, because my French wasn’t good enough to do it at work and remember, I was in a CUBICLE so couldn’t do anything in English. On the weekends, Primo was visiting me and I didn’t want to do it in front of him.

Primo told me he would give me the privacy to do it, but I really just didn’t want to talk to Gomez. I was chicken. And lazy.

So I sent him a very nice email in which I told him that the differences in our values (religion, money, how children should be raised) made a long-term relationship between us impossible, that I thought he was a great guy (except for the extreme anti-Semitism thing, which I thought made him an awful human being and was a total deal breaker) and that I wished him love and happiness. I had been coming to those conclusions anyhow. Marriages between Catholic girls and Muslim boys, even Muslim boys who claim to be non practicing, rarely work.

He tried to call me twice (on Skype, the free internet long-distance calling service, which was how we talked to each other, even though he was a millionaire with not one but two Jaguars looking at Bentleys and Lamborghinis and he cheated on his taxes and lived in a country where live-in help cost almost nothing so had even more money than an American millionaire has) and that was it. Finito. Over. So much for true love. (On his end. I never said such a thing to him. Ever.)

I broke up with him around Thanksgiving.

He never answered the email.

But he tried to call.

In February.

Using Skype.

Yeah. He cared.



* I work, OK? I cook, clean, cut the grass, do the laundry, do the shopping. I have worked in the corporate world. I have been a lifeguard, a Woolco clerk, a Macy's clerk, and a swimming teacher. Yeah, I am also a gold-digger living the life of Riley off my husband's sweat, but he has clean clothes, a clean bathroom, and three hot meals a day.