Fiction
The Crazy Ex
A story about dating someone who scares you
1.
He told you he was crazy.
He told you from the beginning. He said it in a funny singsong voice: “I don’t mean crazy in the way that men say their ex was ‘crazy,’ baby I mean car-razy!”
Actually, he didn’t have to tell you. Admit it. You thought it to yourself, didn’t you, when you met him? He looked it: He had a strange, jaunty energy about him that you had never seen before. At least — you had seen it on animals at the zoo. The big cats. Even when they were motionless, looking like puddles of silk in the shadowy corner of the cage, you sensed their restlessness. He was like that, he made other people nervous. Not that you minded.
“Are you scared of me?”
“No.”
It’s the truth.
You ask precisely what he has, with a little laugh. “Isn’t everybody crazy these days?” You think of the line from Alice in Wonderland: “We are all mad here.”
“Not like that.”
He says it’s bipolar disorder, and “some other stuff.”
“You ever dated anybody who had that?”
“No.”
