Ten years ago today I was just outside of Portland at a beautiful place called Multnomah Falls with a man named Ed. I loved this man with all my heart and I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. I was wrong.
A couple days earlier I had driven all night to get to Vancouver. I had been on night shifts at the time, so it was much easier for me to wake up at 17:00 after a full day’s sleep and hit the road with a big mug of coffee by 18:00. I remember how dark the road was. I was winding in and around mountains, surrounded by forests, cliffs, and endless vistas that people pay thousands or dollars to see, but for me, it was just pure blackness with two orbs of lights from my car illuminating a few feet of road in front of me.
I arrived in Vancouver at about 06:00 as the sun was coming up. Or, more accurately, the cloudy skies got lighter, revealing a misty, rainy day. I crashed on Ed’s bed and fell immediately to sleep with a request to be woken up only four hours later so that I didn’t sleep all day. I wanted to be tired enough to sleep at bed time. We had a busy day of preparing ahead of us as we had planned a fun road trip with another couple and I didn’t want my sleep schedule to be all wonky.
Ed and I had met online using a dating app about six months earlier. We had both noticed each other as friends of friends while I was still dating Richard, but had never spoken. When I became a free man, we latched onto each other and things got serious. In fact, it happened very soon after Richard and I broke up. That relationship had seemed emotionally finished for quite a long time, so it didn’t take long for me to bounce back and start looking for someone new. And when I did, Ed was there waiting.
Two days after arriving in Vancouver, we hit the road for our trip into the United States. We would be driving along the coast with stops in Portland and Seattle. What a modern thing for fancy couples to do!
In fact, Ed was entirely fancy. He lived in a large two bedroom condo in Vancouver that cost him thousands of dollars a month. He drove a nice car and wore designer clothes. He seemed absolutely well-to-do and I fell for it. The truth was that he lived entirely above his means, spending too much money trying to convincing the world of his status as a wealthy man. At the time, I didn’t ponder such things. He was a travelling salesman, and I just assumed he was very successful at his career.
Why wouldn’t I want to accept it? I certainly loved the visions I had of moving to Vancouver and living in the giant condo with him in what can only be described as the life I always dreamed of. I pictured us walking down the street wearing our hipster fashions and loving life. If you find the right journal entry from around 2001, I had declared that Vancouver was absolutely where I wanted to live in. That never materialized, and now was finally my chance to right that wrong.
We were making the longest part of the drive to Portland on the first day, and then slowly making our way back through Seattle. I remember us making some really cool stops that first day, like the famous tulip festival in Washington state where we were surrounded by endless tulips, mountains in the distance, and our own lengthening shadows. Everything there was cute and adorable, set up like a dutch village. It was spectacular. As an odd random memory, it was on this very day that I first went to a Jack-in-the-Box fast food restaurant.
Eventually, after winding our way through Washington State, we arrived in Portland. We went to a great restaurant that was famous for pizza, and we, of course, went to Voodoo donuts as well. The rest of the time was spent wandered around town exploring and being tourists.
I remember that it was around this time that I was looking for an iPad, so a chunk of our days were spent looking for a place that had one in stock. They had just been released to mass hysteria in the United States and were still not available in Canada. It was, in fact, on this trip that I purchased one to bring home, found at some random Best Buy in some random town. I was the first one around to have one of those magical objects and I remember showing it off at work to endless “ooohhhs” and “aaahhhs.”
In general, we walked around acting like a pair of happy couples. I remember accidentally walking in on a fight between our friends and how apologetic they were about me witnessing their yelling. The fight was over Le Creuset cookware, and whether it should be purchased on that day or not (how very gay). I waved them off because it was no big deal that a couple would fight over such things, and that’s the truth. This was the only blip in what could only be described as an idyllic week of modern relationship-ing.
By this time it has been almost six months of Ed and me dating, and we had fallen into a nice little routine. I visited him every 12 weeks on my regular stretch of seven days off of work, and he visited quite often on his travels for work, which included Calgary as part of his sales territory. Between both of those things, it was typically only three weeks or so between seeing each other. I felt we were getting fairly close to the point in which we should start discussing living arrangements. I knew it was coming soon, which it did, but it was nothing like I expected.
The next morning was spent at the absolutely spectacular Multnomah Falls. This is where I was ten years ago to this day and inspired me to write. I’m not sure I can call it anything else but spectacular.
After the falls, we headed off to Seattle with a stop at a very cool glass making museum outside of Tacoma. It was filled with endless candy-coloured blown glass and chunky brilliant sculptures. There were glass-blowing demonstrations that were magical and informative. We wandered around in awe at the brilliance of the place.
Seattle was amazing as well. We did all the typical tourist things like going up the space needle and visiting Pike Place market. I can’t stress how happy this whole trip was for me. I was absolutely in heaven, enjoying what I would describe as absolute perfection and bliss.
What I didn’t know at the time was that Ed was a little frustrated with me. We had fancy hotels with hot tubs and ongoing romantic experiences, which I was absolutely enjoying; However, Ed was desperate for more sexual intimacy from me. This is something I was completely unaware of, and frankly I was caught off guard when I heard about it many many months later. We had sex quite regularly and it was more than enough for me, but I didn’t realized that Ed was unhappy.
Finally, it was time to make our way back to Vancouver. We stopped at some outlet stores to buy some fancy designer clothes to match our dreamy lifestyle, and then we crossed the border back into Vancouver, Canada.
I believe I only stayed in Vancouver for one more day after our adventure. I was on my regular seven days off that was part of my work rotation. With a day in Vancouver before and after the trip, about three days of trip, and two days of me travelling between Calgary and Vancouver, the seven days was already over. So, after my sad goodbyes, I made my way home: this time in daylight. For some reason, I remember blasting Billy Joel for hours as I crossed through the Okanagan and over the rocky mountains.
That was my last trip to visit Ed in Vancouver, and the last time I was in Vancouver until 2018 when I went for a Digital Health conference. During that conference, I was definitely smacked in the face by a lot of memories of Ed. Eight years had passed, and I was obviously over our breakup, but as is tradition with me, I hold onto so much sentimentality that it can’t help bubbling to the surface (e.g., this entire blog post) and thrusting me into memory lane.
12 weeks after our road trip to Portland and Seattle, when it was time to go back to Vancouver, I was excited and ready. A couple days before I was scheduled to go, I mentioned it to Ed, who seemed genuinely confused, completely forgetting that I was coming. He said he just couldn’t have a visit, declaring that he was too upset about something and had to deal with it on his own. I was confused, hurt, and horrified that he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, and that he didn’t want my emotional support. Mostly, I was devastated that I wouldn’t be seeing him.
A couple weeks later, I finally got the truth out of him, discovering that he was broke and looking at declaring bankruptcy. He wasn’t making as much money as he needed to in order to maintain his abundant lifestyle, and everything was crumbling around him. He was incredibly embarrassed and didn’t want me witnessing this happening to him.
Ever the one with solutions, I had a plan. I felt that it was nearing time that we should consider moving in together. Calgary was part of Ed’s traveling sales territory and there was no reason that he couldn’t base himself out of this city. So, I offered him the opportunity to live here with me 100% free of rent and bills. He wouldn’t have to declare bankruptcy, and it would give him the opportunity to dig his way out of debt quickly.
His only response was, “I would never live in that awful city.” I was devastated and heart-broken that he cared more about his image or where he lived than being with me. However, in hind site, it was less that, and more that he was starting to find ways to push (shove?) me away.
He eventually made plans to move back to Newfoundland to live with his family in a similar scheme to what I offered him. (Un)fortunately, I don’t give up easily, so I started making phone calls to hospital ICUs in Newfoundland and managed to get a few job interviews by phone. I had offers for jobs there. I had it all worked out.
However, in the end, I couldn’t overcome the fact that Ed was unhappy with me, and slowly, over the course of a few weeks, spanning his move to Newfoundland, communications slowed down, and then eventually ended. By the time I was making calls to ICUs in Newfoundland looking for jobs, it was basically over. In retrospect, these calls were a desperate attempt by myself to salvage the relationship. To this day, I don’t think Ed knows that I started job hunting and planning to move there.
As most of my relationships do, it ended with a whimper.
Ed wanted me to be more sexual: I wasn’t naked enough, or wanted sex enough, or wanted to be a bottom enough. To him this translated to me not loving him. I couldn’t meet his needs. These were things I had no knowledge of him feeling until much farther in the future when we were reminiscing together.
We talk to this very day on occasion, both of us leading separate and happy lives. When the subject comes up, he argues that it was the move to Newfoundland that ended things and I argue that it was more than that. I definitely believe he pushed me away.
Today, Ed is married and living in Toronto. He’s building (as in literally building with his two hands) a house there, and they seem to be as happy as can be. I go to Toronto a lot to see Bryon, and despite our constant messages of “we should do coffee,” we never do.
Ed once interestingly stated, “I want you to meet my husband since you and him are the two most important people in my life.” This is a profound and surprising statement to me that I still can’t quite fit into my memory of our story.
After we went our separate ways, time moved on and hearts healed. I continued to reach out into the dating world, and many many more adventures were had. Ed was just the beginning of a ten-year emotional roller coaster that both destroyed me and energized me.
The Intensive Art 
Silly me! This actually took place on April 15th 2010, and not June 6th 2010. That explains why in the next post I felt confused about dates.