Sometimes, you wish your boyfriend was someone else. Someone you haven't known for two years already. Someone who doesn't gargle with mouthwash before sex, perhaps. Maybe even someone who doesn't announce to you at the end of every month just how much of his credit card debt he's managed to pay off.
Someone like that boy on the bridge you're going to pass on the way home tonight. He'll stand out because he'll be the only one on the bridge who is neither in a couple nor on a bike. He'll just be standing by the railing at the very middle of the bridge, sobbing out into the expanse of the river below while he scribbles what is most likely a goodbye note onto the back of a Lost Dog flyer.
You'll look to your boyfriend. You'll listen to the song he'll have been whistling for the majority of the past three weeks. And then you'll look back at the boy on the bridge, who will be loading up the pockets of his jacket with heavy stones. Why couldn't you have been my boyfriend for the past two years? you'll wonder. You would have been exciting. I'm young and I need exciting right now. Anyone who finds himself sobbing off the side of the bridge in the middle of the night has to be fun in the sack too, right?
You'll keep walking, and it will be all you can do to keep from turning around to take one last look at the boy on the bridge. Maybe if he sees me looking at him he'll find in my eyes some reason to keep on living. Then I'll have to break it off with my boyfriend and go with the boy on the bridge because a life will be at stake.
"MAAAARTHA!!!" you'll hear him shout out at the cityscape. Good God what you wouldn't give for your name to be Martha. To have a boy so wrapped up in you that he's got nothing else to do but head to the middle of a bridge and scream your name as loud as he can.
"Think you'll ever scream my name like that?" you'll ask your boyfriend.
"Maybe if you're in danger. Like if you're standing in the bus lane while waiting for the crossing light to change. You should never do that you know."
You know. You know that even if you were to break it off with your boyfriend right then, you still wouldn't be able to run and make something happen with the boy on the bridge. You would have to have met him two years ago, right before Martha met him. Then you'd be the reason he's standing on the bridge summing things up on the back of a Lost Dog flyer. Then it would be your name he's screaming into the wind. And then he'd jump, and you'd run out and recover with someone safe. Someone like your current boyfriend of two years.
"Oh Gosh," your boyfriend will say. "Seinfeld reruns start in ten minutes. We have to book it. It's the 'Master of Your Domain' episode."
You and your boyfriend will trot the rest of the length of the bridge to make it home in time for him to watch Seinfeld reruns in bed. Only once will you look back at the boy on the bridge, when you're pretty far away. He'll be gone. Whether he jumped or just had a change of heart and walked home, you won't know. You'll only know that he's gone.
Happy The Boy On The Bridge Might Have Been Fun To Date Day!
