My entry in The /Filmcast’s Scott Pilgrim: Worst Ex-boyfriend contest

College. Senior year. November, the week before Thanksgiving vacation. Friday. I’m going to pop the question Sunday night at dinner, at Chico’s Restaurant. I’ve got the ring. It’s going to be a surprise.

Friday afternoon my girlfriend tells me that an old friend is going to stop by the campus. She’d like to spend Friday evening “catching up” with him. Afterward, would it be ok if he spent the night in my dorm room, since my roommate would be away for the weekend?

Who is this guy, this old friend, I asked her? Nobody, she said. Nobody important. Just a guy she used to know.

So that night she went out with him and I went out drinking with my buddies. They asked me why I didn’t go along with my girlfriend and the guy. I said, well… I… she didn’t ask me. The guy’s name was Brad. I never saw him that night. When I got back to my room, I was stinking drunk. My roommate’s bed was empty.

Saturday morning I woke up with a terrible hangover. Brad lay in the other bed under a sheet, hands behind his head, looking over at me.

“Nice picture,” he said, indicating a photo on my desk that I had taken of my girlfriend. She signed it for me with love and kisses.

“She sent me a copy, too,” he said. “So, you’re a friend of Katy’s?”

I felt awful and it seemed stupid to tell him that Katy was my girlfriend. How was it that Katy hadn’t told him the night before, anyway? I didn’t answer him.

Then he got out of bed. Had to be a foot taller than me, blond, handsome, and, naked as he was, I could see that he was big as a horse. It was hard to take my eyes off that thing. I got up, grabbed my clothes, headed down the hall to the showers, and never went back to my room. A guy pointed out Brad’s Porsche in the parking lot.

At breakfast in the Union, I asked Katy how often she had gone out with Brad. For how long?

“Freshman and sophomore years,” she said. The two years that I was in community college, before we met.

I asked her what Brad did now.

“After graduation, he went to work for Senator Smith. They say he’s going to rise high in the government as he gets older… But, Honey, you’ll be a big success, too, whatever you decide to do.”

I’ve changed majors three times. To get my degree, I have to take classes this summer after our class graduates. I have no idea what I want to do with my life. When Katy and I go on a date off-campus, we have to take the bus. My parents are on food stamps.

I didn’t see Katy again Saturday. I stayed up late Saturday night but Brad didn’t show. However, when I woke in the morning, he was there in my roommate’s bed. I didn’t see Katy all day Sunday, so in the evening I lurked in the trees outside her dorm. She came up the walk alone at twilight, her hair and clothing disheveled, with a strange look on her face that I couldn’t interpret. I waited in the trees but she didn’t come out again and I finally gave up and went back to my dorm. Brad didn’t return to the room Sunday night.

Monday morning, he was gone.