Phil Collins is playing somewhere in the background and it’s impossible not to think of Patrick Bateman. Still, Eleanor would rather think about a psychotic serial killer than her own psychotic boyfriend (who may or may not have been a serial killer for all she knew at this point). Aaron. That was definitely a psycho’s name, she realized too late. After wasting four of the last years of her life on him. Years she could have spent doing possibly anything else more worthwhile. Being a ho, researching a cure for  cancer, writing a book. Anything, in fact, would have been more worthwhile than giving her time and passion to motherfucking Aaron. Aaron, who she found out the hard way was having multiple side “flings” from the moment she thought they had gone “official.” Turned out, that word had no meaning to Aaron. 

He had—like so many other men—“loose” definitions of monogamy. A concept abhorred by the male species seemingly since the dawn of time, when their role was to hunt for food as much as they did for pussy. Little had changed…except now, they couldn’t even be bothered to bring food. There were delivery people for that. People you had to pay. Indeed, men in their “purest” provider form had actually been rendered irrelevant by capitalism. A system that placed everyone into the supposed “male role” of bringing the bread home (even though there was no bread in the Stone Age, but one gets the point, no?). Which did, of course, beg the question: what really was the purpose of a man? Not just because everyone was now required to bring home the bacon/bread/cheese, but because even their “seed” could be manufactured, too. So that old “excuse” about “needing” men to procreate had become tired as well. What with cloning options and the fact that there is already enough existing sperm in the world to “keep populating” for generations. 

Eleanor knew all of these things. As did most other women like (or even unlike) her. But that didn’t change the heartbrokenness she was currently experiencing. A feeling so all-consuming, it radiated and coursed throughout her body, as though she had just rolled around repeatedly on a bed of hot coals. She imagined that feeling would actually be preferable to what she was experiencing. In the days that followed her revelation about Aaron, she certainly would have been willing to swap her present feeling for the rolling-all-over-hot-coals one. And what was this burning inside of her anyway? She honestly couldn’t tell if it was anger or sadness, or some cruel, new-fangled tincture of both. And fuck Aaron for concocting this tincture with his actions. How dare he be so callous and cavalier with her heart? Nothing more than a mutilated, mushy heap on the floor of her bedroom, where she had formed a depression cocoon. Thanks to him. He who roamed the world like it was the oyster he always knew it to be. As though he didn’t just destroy an entire life. Though, naturally, there were those who would readily tell Eleanor that her life could finally begin now. It wasn’t destroyed, it was born anew. Restored from the ashes of what she had tried to call a life before. 

These were the gits who would dare to go so far as to tell Eleanor that Aaron had actually done her a favor by exposing himself…figuratively and literally. Because she caught him red-handed (Shaggy-style) banging some redhead (that was a lot of seeing red for Eleanor) in the very bed they shared. He could have at least had the decency to keep it contained on the living room couch, or even the guest bedroom. But no, it’s as though he had absolutely no conscience at all about it. But then, why would he? If you’re going to cheat, might as well go “whole hog.” And that’s exactly what Aaron was: a hog, a pig, an animal. With no shred of human decency to be found. That was an oxymoron anyway, Eleanor supposed: human decency. Ha! What a laugh. Not much of that to be had anymore, was there? Sort of went out the window with the Holocaust, didn’t it? What did Eleanor really expect from anyone, let alone a man? 

This flurry of thoughts swirled and birled in her brain—and no, Phil Collins soundtracking it all at the coffee shop she had briefly tried to take solace in wasn’t doing much to allay her fraught mind. It amazed her that there were people who genuinely believed Phil Collins was soothing. Soothing, for fuck’s sake. How could people with such tastes not comprehend that there was nothing more grating than someone trying at the sound of placation. Unless it was Enya. Enya was the only exception. Why couldn’t they play some goddamn Enya? Eleanor could guarantee she wouldn’t be nearly as close to a public mental breakdown if they did. Theoretically. And then Eleanor also had to ask herself why she had deigned and dared to enter the public space at all. It was a huge mistake to do so when the wound was still fresh. 

She had only discovered the betrayal four days ago, and had been mostly bedridden ever since. Work be damned, social responsibilities be damned—all of it be damned! She didn’t care what happened to her anymore. What did it matter now that she had unearthed the reality that her entire relationship was a four-year lie? Nonetheless, neither her friends nor her family seemed to really understand, really care about the damage that had been done. How her faith and trust in everything had been shattered. But no, they all said variations of the same thing: that it was “for the best” and “time to move onward and upward.” Where were all these advisories when it might have actually mattered? Earlier on in her relationship, before it was too late and she went much too far down the rabbit hole of emotional attachment. In the present, these “assurances” were useless to her. Worse still, insulting. As if she didn’t know they were willing to say whatever it took to “make her” keep going. To continue on as a functioning member of society. Everyone was a traitor to their kind that way, doing their part to cajole the other cogs in the wheel to keep moving, to just “get over it.” After all, everyone had endured some similar pain, right? As though pain had no nuance or distinction from one person to the next. Like everything else, “the state” had effectively rendered it “one size fits all.” 

And since such pain seemed to fit “all” others so well, they wondered why Eleanor couldn’t simply “move on” as they did from their respective heartbreaks. Obviously, it was because they hadn’t truly been in love. They had experienced a simulacrum of love—she was certain of it. Because even for as shitty as Aaron turned out to be, she couldn’t deny what she felt for him. For anyone who didn’t believe her—thought she was being irrational—well, then, she would tell them to just look at the love Britney had for Justin.

Unable to bear the sound of Phil Collins’ nasally tone any longer, Eleanor abandoned her half-drunk coffee (asking for a to-go cup would have been unbearable) in favor of the cold, rain-soaked streets. How was it possible that whenever your mood was at its worst, so, too, was the weather? It was one of those perennial cruel ironies. Like your ex moving on quickly to some more “malleable” girl and suddenly being only too down to commit to her in ways that he never did to you. Thanks to the “wonders” of social media, this was something Eleanor found out about far sooner than she would have expected. About two weeks after she announced to him that they were over. 

Apparently, though, Aaron had been keeping someone (or several someones) in the wings already. Which is exactly what Olivia Rodrigo talks about on “traitor.” Except that Eleanor didn’t even have the luxury of being able to say, “It took you two weeks to go off and date her/Guess you didn’t cheat/But you’re still a traitor.” No, Aaron was both a cheat and a traitor. He was basically Don Draper, minus the gecko-y good looks. Yet of course it would be easy for him to hook someone new. Someone who could more effortlessly overlook his flaws. Namely, his dick’s flaw of needing to plunge into an array of different pussies. Eleanor understood that needing to jack off to an array of different women was one thing. But outright infidelity was something else entirely. Something untenable for Eleanor. Maybe another more “amenable” girl could “handle it” (a.k.a. look the other way), but not Eleanor. From her perspective, she had to ask: what was the point of claiming you were in a relationship if what that really meant was you were, for all intents and purposes, fucking your “roommate” who also boned anyone else who walked into the apartment and happened to be interested? 

Aaron tried to tell her, as she was breaking up with him, that she wasn’t looking at the situation with an “evolved enough” viewpoint. And that the reason he never confessed to his “illicit affairs” (as Taylor Swift would call them) was because he knew this would be the reaction Eleanor gave him. That said, he didn’t actually want things to end with her. He wanted her to be his “main” while he continued to “have at” whoever else he wanted at any given moment without “penalty.” The penalty, in this scenario, being for Eleanor to call him out for his philandering. Whereas this new girl, surely, didn’t mind at all. Maybe she was even capable of guiltlessly fucking other dudes herself while serving as Aaron’s “main.” 

That wasn’t Eleanor. She was a “one guy, one girl” sort of person, and she didn’t care how heteronormative or inherently capitalistic that made her. She wanted the goddamn monogamous fairy tale, just like Vivian Ward. So no, she couldn’t “move on.” She had been counting on Aaron to make that dream real. And, as far as she knew, up until she found out about his “libertinism,” the dream was real. Thus, to be visually informed that the entire thing had been little more than a girlish, puerile fantasy is perhaps what broke Eleanor most of all. 

After a few years, she stopped bothering to check up on Aaron. Not because she thought it was too pathetic (as most others did), but because it was too painful to see that every time she looked, he was still with the same girl. Eleanor couldn’t bear to keep checking by the fifth year since their breakup. Because if she saw that he was still with her, it would not only mean “the other woman” had “won” by exceeding the length of time of Eleanor’s relationship with Aaron, but that some bitches really were capable of “polyamory.” In other words, kowtowing to the ultimate male fantasy in every way when men themselves would never entertain the ultimate female fantasy. Like, say, the “Pretty Woman path.” A path that, had it gone on to show any scenes after Act Three, would have likely revealed Edward Lewis to be yet another anti-monogamist hiding his inevitable affairs from a streetwise, yet only-too-naive Vivian Ward.