It’s been one year since my boyfriend, Jessie Valentine, fell for a YouTuber who did a stripped-down version of “Wonderwall” in an unassuming white bralette. Her name is Li, short for Lisa, but I call her Eeyore because of her dyed grey hair and low monotone voice.
It all started last spring when Jessie threatened to break up with me after I said I wanted to go to Coachella “for fun.” He shrieked in such a high-pitched falsetto, his black rimmed glasses nearly cracked. He went on a rant about how I never understood him artistically and that participating in “the machine” ironically was the worst sin I could commit aside from listening to Coldplay. He called me “unoriginal” and turned on his laptop to watch Eeyore singing “Creep” in an adult footed pajama onesie.
Things got worse in the summertime after I told him that my favorite R.E.M. song was “Shiny Happy People.” He got so angry that I thought his slim-framed body was going to overheat and suffocate in his Christmas sweater. When I told him that I like it when alternative bands do pop songs, he disappeared to the bedroom to stalk Eeyore’s Instagram. That night, I caught him masturbating to a photo of her smoking weed, taken on an analog camera app and captioned “Smells Like Teen Spirit #filmisnotdead.”
In the fall, we got into a major fight after he found a reality television show recorded on my DVR. He was fuming so much that his wavy locks started falling out of his head. I tried to defend the show’s nuance and humor, but Jessie couldn’t understand because he lacks the ability to laugh.
One time, we watched a sitcom and he was so restrained that he became constipated for a month.
The last straw was New Year’s Eve when I wanted to go to a club instead of staying in and watching the movie, Mother!. This time, he didn’t even raise his voice. Instead, he very slowly explained how “the titular punctuation drove the story’s innovation.” I told him that sounded like something the small-framed, shaggy-haired guys with thick-rimmed glasses and oversized clothing who went to film school with Jessie would say. He patted me on the head and expressed sympathy for that fact that I “didn’t have the tools” to understand what constitutes “a near perfect film” even though I got my PhD in visual anthropology.
The next day, Eeyore uploaded a video singing a breathy a cappella cover of “Where Is My Mind?” in a bathroom with good acoustics. That did it. Jessie told me that he could no longer hide his feelings. They had made a connection via Direct Message and he would be “dishonoring me and himself” by “not following the art.” He moved in with her shortly after, and they adopted a stray mini-horse together.
It’s spring again, and I can finally go to Coachella now that Jessie is no longer in my life. Who knows, I may actually see him there. I hear he discovered pseudo-science and left Eeyore for a yogi who has sacred geometry tattoos that she claims came from a rendering of her deceased grandfather’s drawings but are really from the Illuminati Wikipedia page.
I’ve moved on too. I started dating a bald WWE wrestler who wears muscle tees, likes country music, and has 20/20 vision.