“Well, its ok I guess. Tim and Thomas are two names that are not meant to be romantically involved,” I thought to myself as irrational tears made their way down my cheeks, while I quickly walked down Lansdowne Street, away from Tim’s workplace. I smacked my hand against each side of my face, violently wiping off the tears while averting my eyes from the looks of drunken girls in halter-tops that were screaming some crap about the Red Sox.

I was especially happy that the Sox won that night in October because at least I could pass off my weak sob-fest as hyper-elation over the quickly reversing curse that the Boston baseball team had incurred years ago. “Tim and Tom,” I said under my breath, “sounds like a stupid cartoon where animals drop anvils on one another or stick dynamite in each other’s mouths while looking bug-eyed.”

I actually don’t really have a head anymore. My cartoon counterpart won, so there is a cold black anvil standing upon my neck where my head should be, and let me tell you, I am so much hotter now. It doesn’t really matter how attractive I am these days because I’m throwing in the towel. The anvil on my head is a symbol that I can’t do the American Dream Moderne because I’m just one of those people who doesn’t have the ability.

The American Dream Moderne is a three-pronged hope for all Americans born out of the cinematic rainy-day kisses of romantic comedies: successful career, supportive friends, sustaining love. To have all three is to obtain the Holy Grail, and this anvil on my neck or the dynamite that I’m quickly attempting to digest (both provided by a bug-eyed guy who’s name sounds much like mine when tripping off the tongue) is making things really hard for me to pull off my most convincing Indiana Jones impression. I’m the one of the odd men out.

Tim showed me something by his quick departure from my life: a pattern. There’s nothing so damning in evidential terms as a pattern and my pattern is quick departures, either perpetrated by me or by the guy I am seeing. The pattern sent the message that I am capable of “the career” or at least a pursuit of success, and my friends are incredibly loving and supportive, but as for love or whatever love has become, I’m pretty bankrupt. I go on dates with some very interesting young men, and all I can think about is what my next project will be, what my next column will be on, what kind of sound my band will evolve into, what my friends are doing – anything but the situation at hand.

The situation at hand is the attempt by another person to make a connection with me, and I always find a way out or he does. I think I’m secretly terrified, and this fear is so secret that I can’t even identify or recall it. And that might happen at dinner on the first date.

Or after the dinner or movie, my date and I will go to his place to “talk and stuff,” which usually means we’re going to make-out. He’ll kiss me and I’ll kiss back because that’s what the people in the movies do, and then my eyes will open wide and I’ll look at the lids of the boy I’m kissing or at our kissing reflection on some shiny surface in my eye-line and think calmly, “I feel nothing. I feel nothing for you. I could walk away right now.” He fumbles and rubs against me, and we make the noises we’re supposed to. He’ll ask me if I “wanna,” and I’ll look at him and say “No, it’ll mean more to us if we take it slow,” which really means that he terrifies me, and I terrify me and the way I feel when I know that the sight and touch of my own body changes some one else’s very body chemistry terrifies me. And that’s just one date.

It’s even more frightening on a long-term basis. I have had a few long term relationships, good relationships that verged on some kind of love, but in the back of my mind there always remained that image of me in the mirror hanging by the lips of some boy knowing that I could walk away, preventing me from ever truly being invested. We all do it to some extent. We are each an elaborate and beautiful lattice of scar tissue from failed friendships, relationships, projects and even failed identities. It becomes a kind of armor that we constantly thrust against other people (and their respective armor) to keep ourselves from ever again being as vulnerable as that first time you were bludgeoned so badly by love.

I got into my car on Lansdowne Street and drove through the city, driving past ex-boyfriend’s houses, first date-restaurants and other landmarks of failed relationships. I felt stupid and childish for being upset, but once again I was just doing what I thought people in the movies did. I called a friend and laughed about something stupid to keep myself from wallowing in self-pity. After all, I had two-thirds of the dream that the movies prescribed for me, and that ain’t bad. Besides, I don’t really think any screenwriter ever met someone like me.

Thomas Naughton is a Collegian columnist.