All My Exes: Part 3
The Ex Checklist
roduced and written by Evan Roberts
Story edited by Kate Sullivan
Consulting Producer: David Boyer
Illustration by Andy Gottschalk
Table of Contents:
Part 3: The Ex Checklist
Now that I had permission from my boyfriend….
How was I going to define what constitutes an “ex”?
The criteria for what qualifies someone as an ex is going to be different for everyone.
Someone I think is an ex-boyfriend might not even think of me as their ex-anything.
I developed a structured approach to figure out who I felt qualified as a bonafide ex.
If you meet at least 4 of the following criteria, then you earn the prestigious honor of being my ex.
Congratulations in advance!
Let’s use Doug as our first example.
Doug was a co-worker at my first job in San Francisco.
Hi Doug!
First, I’ll start with two examples from the archive.
Doug played the guitar in a band and I asked for his help recording a folk song1 that my dad would sing to me before bed. I sang, and Doug figured out the chords.
I gave this recording to my parents as a Christmas gift that year.
Exhibit B: This journal excerpt was written in 2004.
Dear Journal:
I had a dream where I was at work and someone came in with a gun and was shooting at everyone. A bullet hit me in the calf and one hit Doug in the shoulder. We both were rushed to the hospital in the same ambulance. I looked down at Doug and told him everything was gonna be OK.
I told my coworker Nate this dream and he said it might represent a dream of forced intimacy.2
One check for Doug!
Doug was friendly to me on my first day of work and I was instantly smitten.
But I was shy and he was hard to read, so it took a few months before we hung out together outside of work.
On a windy day after clocking out, we bought two 40 ounces of cheap beer at a corner store and headed up to Corona Heights, one of my favorite lookout spots in San Francisco.3
We slow walked up the side of the hill and paused to silently take in the skyline together. The city lights buzzed in the dusk.
The wind pushed through the space between our bodies and the air hummed over the tops of our open 40 bottles at just the right angle, producing a sustained note like this:
It was incredibly romantic and made my months long crush even more unbearable.
Another check for Doug!
Six months later I told him over drinks that I had more-than-friend feelings for him.
But Doug was only interested in being pals.
I was disappointed, but relieved to get it off my chest.
I think this counts more as a negotiation than a break up, as our friendship remained stable for years after.
Third check for Doug!
But…
Doug and I never hooked up. Never even kissed.
And we never had a break up conversation.
Sorry Doug! You’re not an ex.
Womp Womp
I had started with a long list of potential people to contact.
This method helped weed out the Dougs from the Dudes.
I got it down to 22 people.
So… I started reaching out.
Some people I hadn’t talked to in over a decade.
16 out of 22 people said yes.
I started off small. I reached out to the people who I knew would say yes.
Like my very first boyfriend, First Time.
We dated long-distance my freshman year of college for only a few months.4
I had no idea that I was his Mark P-H-E-L-A-N.
I asked my now friend Mr. Exuberant, who I dated briefly fifteen years ago.
It wasn’t until we sat down to record that we remembered our first date (exuberantly):
And I talked with my First Kiss from high school, who I’m still friends with to this day.
I’m the only ex she really keeps in touch with.
Those three people were the easiest gets.
I knew they would trust me and say yes without blinking.
But then it got a little harder.
One ex said no for very personal reasons: he didn’t want his wife to ever know he had dated men before her.
When I asked Gay Voice, who I thought I was on good terms with, if I could interview him for a podcast he asked:
“Why would you want to interview me? Is your podcast particularly interested in opinionated Jewish bottoms of the Bay Area?”
When I gave him more details, he decided he didn’t want any of his personal life online. And then, he stopped responding to my texts all together.
At first Mr. Clean’s husband seemed threatened by this project. When we met in person for the first time, he said he had assumed I was a narcissist.
“Why else would someone want to interview all their exes?”
I had to unblock Volatile Romantic on all my social media platforms just to reach out to him to ask for an interview.
He said yes right away.
I later learned it was so he could apologize for kicking me out of his house at 3am with all my things in a rolling suitcase (in a city I didn’t live in!)
Bad Boy said no on a Facebook Message in January…
…but months later I had a dream about him and reached out to ask again.5
I caught him in a different headspace. He said yes.
I recorded 10 interviews in person at my exes home.
I went to Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.
I stopped in Austin and Los Angeles.
I recorded three people in San Francisco, one of them twice.
The rest of the interviews were done over the phone or an audio-only Zoom call.
These aren’t the best interviews I’ve ever done.
But they are the most raw and revealing.
All in all, I recorded over 1,500 minutes of tape.6
To be continued in Part 4, where you’ll hear Last Girlfriend say:
Next time on….
I’d love to hear your thoughts and your stories about exes.
Leave a comment below!
I think our family song “Drifting in the Moonlight” is a misremembered version of “Beautiful Ohio” which is the State Song of Ohio. No one in our family ever lived in Ohio.
“Nate”, wherever you are, I miss your brain. You once said “If you ever need to look busy at work, just walk around carrying a clipboard. No one will question you.”
This series will feature many as they are often the site of many of my romantic memories: Corona Heights, Tank Hill, Twin Peaks, Buena Vista Park, and Bernal Hill.
On our first date, he ordered Pellegrino. I was mortified because now the waitress would definitely know that we were gay because we were two men eating together and we ordered sparkling water.
My mother always says I was a persistent child.
26 hours! I could have watched “When Harry Met Sally” about 17 times.