Ghosts of Boyfriends Past.

I was trundling along to the deli, walking and talking with my renovation-wing-man Miss M, about the worst most toxic boyfriends we ever had... and OH MY LORD there's my worst nightmare covering an entire the wall inside the ANZ bank.  I stop dead and point "that's him" and it wasn't Simon Baker. Then I couldn't help to notice; "oh my! The years have not been kind" I grinned at M gleefully; "How come I'm still a bit cute and he's a fat old fart?" 

A man walking behind us for a block - whose ears you could hear crackling with flames such was the fervor of his eavesdropping, stopped briefly to look at the mural then quickly, self consciously moved away sniggering.

Well I gotta say, there's something tantalizingly satisfying in seeing someone who caused you so much grief in your youth still clinging to a modeling career but now posing for retirement financial products.  When I knew him he was cute, yes a model, and a singer, songwriter, base guitarist and a self absorbed drunken lunatic.

This is the guy who I left after several sessions of unprovoked drunken and sober tantrums and several counts of cheating with a cheap blonde who had a perpetually red face because she was a drunk too. We called her Tomato.

He was "so devastated" when I left him; he wrote and recorded two songs about just how devastated he was. 
He even used to call in the middle of the night and "sing his pain" to me. Often he had his friends sing it to me as well until I changed my number.

I found out that he took the Tomato to the recording studios and she no doubt giggled and bounced and applauded while he sang about his heartache and sorrowful loss of me. She was a stupid tomato too.

He turned up at my work's reception one day with the released CD in his hand and a sheepish expression. 

After I accepted it he asked me for $20.  

Apparently it hadn't done so well and they were trying to recover studio costs. I gave him $20 and sent him on his sorry way.

Do I feel smug now?

Just a little bit.