The Ex-Girlfriend Clone IncidentDec 19 '02 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line If there’s a girl out there that looks exactly like my ex-girlfriend, you can be damn sure that there’s a girl out there that looks exactly like your ex-girlfriend. A couple of days ago, I met someone who looks exactly like my ex-girlfriend. A friend of mine had a party in Brooklyn. I showed up. I walked in, and there she was, sitting on the bed. (The girl who looks like my ex-girlfriend, that is. Not my friend who threw the party.) I paused. Shock. I blinked. Denial. I thought about leaving. Bargaining. I considered the possibility that this girl might actually be my ex-girlfriend and not some freaky clone of her. Fear. I sent my friend who threw the party a dirty look. Because why had she invited this freaky clone of my ex-girlfriend? Maliciousness? Piss-taking? Revenge? What the hell had I done? Anger. I realized that I was going to have to stay at the party for at least a little while, anyway, so I cracked open my 40 oz. St. Ides and took a fat swig. Despair. I introduced myself to freaky clone girl and asked her name. Acceptance. Seven stages of grief in approximately seven seconds. Her name was Lindsay. The party actually didn’t go too badly. Lindsay didn’t stick around for very long, and I didn’t talk to her longer than to find out that she’d just moved to New York from Denver. My ex-girlfriend was from Northern California. Lindsay didn’t sound like my ex-girlfriend. She was a little more obnoxious; a little louder. She didn’t particularly act like my ex-girlfriend. She did, however, look like my ex-girlfriend. Let me repeat that for emphasis, because none of my friends that weren’t at the party believe that freaky clone girl really exists. I mean, they say they do, but I can tell from the way they placate me with their “Oh, Really? Well, that’s strange” reactions. They may believe that this girl slightly resembled my ex-girlfriend, but they don’t really believe that she looked as exactly like my ex-girlfriend as she did. And believe me: She. Looked. Exactly. Like my ex-girlfriend, down to tying her hair back into two short pigtails on the top of her head. Same cheeks. Same eyebrows. Same body. I’m told the mouth was different, but I didn’t notice because I was too busy staring slack-jawed at her cheeks, eyebrows, and body. Now, here’s the thing. First, it’s important to understand that I haven’t seen my ex-girlfriend for a good two and a half years. The relationship didn’t particularly end under the pleasantest of circumstances, at least not on my part, because, well, when do they? I don’t particular want to see her, um, ever. Second, it’s important to understand that I dated her on the West Coast, and all this happened on the East Coast, far, far away from the West Coast and, presumably, my West Coast ex-girlfriend. Now, here’s the thing: If Lindsay had stuck around the party for any longer, I would have hit on her. I would have, I know it. I would have hit on her knowing how horrible an idea it would have been to hit on her. I could feel myself gearing up to hit on her, and then she left. And that was good, that she left, because she was a dangerous land mine waiting to go off in my head. Yet, here I am, writing about her anyway. Boom. This—and, understandably, I think—this raises some conflict. Not only because I almost hit on an exact clone of a girl I don’t even particularly like, but because What the Fuck? THERE’S A GIRL OUT THERE IN THIS WORLD THAT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE MY EX-GIRLFRIEND! …and if there’s a girl out there that looks exactly like my ex-girlfriend, you can be damn sure that there’s a girl out there that looks exactly like your ex-girlfriend. Or your ex-boyfriend. Or your high school sweetheart. Or whatever. More importantly, there’s someone out there that looks exactly like me. My eyebrows. My cheeks. My body. And then what? What if this freaky clone guy is out there stealing candy from kids or running through puddles in his taxi cab, drenching poor, unsuspecting sidewalk-walkers? What if, one day, someone who knows me sees this bizarro me running around, willy-nilly, doing horrible deeds and such? What if they think it’s me? Admittedly, my reputation ain’t sterling to begin with, but at least it’s mine. I don’t need some candy-stealing, puddle-splashing, Belgian-bashing meat head head head neck tarnishing my good name any more than it already is, even if he is quite a handsome devil. On the other hand, if there is, in fact, a freaky clone me running around out there, I would have damn well liked to have known about it a lot earlier. That way, he and I could have conspired to create a composite, more perfect me to show the world. We could take turns. One me would do all the work, while the other me hangs out in the strip club champagne rooms. Then we switch. Everybody wins. (And by “everybody,” I mean me.) See, instead of fighting, we can just share an identity. I’m sure that Lindsay was a nice girl. But, if I had gotten the chance to get to know her, she would have had a lot of work to do to rid herself of the stigma of my ex-girlfriend. That just doesn’t seem fair, does it? You spend an entire lifetime trying to carve out a single, unique identity for yourself, and all of a sudden, you share it with someone else. It makes me never want to worry about identity ever again.  |
| Read all comments (37)|Write your own comment |
