When Michael so kindly invited me to contribute an essay to Love Is a Four-Letter Word, I initially found myself at a loss.

To anyone who has dated me, this should come as a surprise. I could fill an entire volume with "true stories of breakups, bad relationships, and broken hearts," as the subtitle says. I imagine that if Zagat's were to write a Lousy Relationship Guide, my entry would read,  "A large number of her 'emotional entanglements' are fraught with 'bumpy patches' and end on a 'less-than-sanguine' note. 'Zero' ambience, but 'extensive' liquor selection."

In truth, though, many of my relationships (particularly in college) were far too dark to be trotted out for laughs. And although I'm pretty adept at bathos, I prefer humor, especially because it is impossible to plumb the depths of said "emotional entanglements" without sounding like I was the bad person. Perhaps I was.

Frankly, I can be a pretty horrible person when I put my mind to it.

But fortunately for everyone else, I'm also incredibly lazy. So much so that I've fallen into and out of relationships merely because I couldn't be bothered to put up a fight. None of these relationships merited veneration in the anthology.

t I'll talk about one of them now, however, because it's Monday and if you're reading this, you're probably looking for any excuse not to work.

In college, I "dated" one guy whose apartment was haunted, and I found that fact interesting enough for a few weeks. But then he didn't call, and I didn't call, and then I moved, and I didn't see him until a year or so later, when he delivered a pizza to my apartment and remarked (I'm not joking), "Huh, I always wondered where you lived." There was another guy who was my study partner in our Northern Renaissance art history class (that one ended after our final exams). Another time, for a few weeks, I went out with a guy because he had heat and hot water and I didn't and it was January.

But my relationship of least resistance had to be Roger, the goth grad student. I noticed him one day in the dining hall, and in a room of tanned, blond southerners he stood out in his layers of black clothing and his pale complexion. Most intriguing, he was clearly old enough to drink, whereas no one I knew was.

We went out on our only date at the local goth club, Netherworld. I cautiously sipped a beer (I didn't have the over-21 bracelet) and sat in silence next to Roger, watching sad goths doing their sad goth dance to Concrete Blonde. He wasn't bad looking; he had a bit of a Nick Cave thing going on with his dyed black hair and silver jewelry. He didn't talk much. He put most of his effort into drinking.

We went back to his apartment, where he disappeared into the bathroom and left me with some well-worn issues of Love and Rockets. It soon became apparent that he was ill from drinking too much. He called me the next day to apologize. I told him no apology was necessary, because it was unlikely that we'd ever go out again.

Right now, you're thinking One unconsummated date doesn't make a relationship, D, but let me finish. Over the next few weeks, when I saw Roger in the dining hall, I would smile wanly at him. I didn't talk to him. Then, one day--the weekend before Halloween--he called me up out of the blue and invited me to drive to New Orleans with him to get tickets to Anne Rice's Halloween Ball. Sure, it was a ten-hour, 700-mile drive with a complete stranger, but I'd never been to New Orleans, and I didn't have a car, and so all of a sudden, Roger was interesting again.

He picked me up the next morning in a wood-paneled late-80s station wagon.

"Hey," he said, "It's so great to see you again. I still feel really bad about that night--"

I interrupted him. "Where the hell did you get this car? Is it even going to make the trip?"

"It belongs to my grandparents. It's fine, totally fine."

So we set off down I-95, Roger driving, and me trying to find a decent radio station. (As an aside, we heard "Sweet Home Alabama" no fewer than 37 times during our trip. It's almost impossible to avoid, particularly once you hit I-10.)

The lurching began around Jacksonville.

"Did you get a tune-up before the trip?" This was a pointless question, and I knew the answer already. After some bickering, and many white-knuckled miles during which the bucking seemed to get worse and worse, Roger finally agreed to stop at a BF Goodrich in Tallahassee. The mechanic there said it could be one of two things--a clogged fuel filter, or something far ominous and expensive that involved some tiny computerized sensor module thing. We asked him to change the fuel filter, and 2.5 hours later we were back on the road with a sense of grim resolve--as well as the drooping ceiling upholstery--hanging low over our heads.

The car drove smoothly until we passed Pensacola, and when the lurching began again I told Roger point blank that we were stopping for the night before we died in a fiery wreck. I had done the math in my head; even if we didn't stop and made good time, we wouldn't get to New Orleans before 11 and, having no map and no place to stay, it seemed ill-advised to continue. Mobile was the next big town.

"But we're so close," Roger whined. I insisted, and hoped that we could find a motel for less than $30, which was one-third of all the money I had.

But first we drove to the Pep Boys. The way we looked, the mechanics must have thought we were cross-country serial killers making a pit stop. But when they ran those mysterious "diagnostics" on the car, we found out that the car did, indeed, need an obscure and pricey computerized sensor module thing. They told us they could order it for us and that it would be in the next morning.

God bless the Motel 6 in Mobile. $36 total got us a clean quiet room with (thank god) two double beds. I immediately got into one bed, fully clothed, turned the lights off, and pulled the covers up to my neck. It was early still, but I was done talking to Roger for the day, and--as far as I was concerned--for the rest of my life.

He sat down on the other bed, backlit by the parking lot lights that shone through the tiny window. I heard him sigh. "I'm so sorry. I feel terrible about this. I just wish I could hug you--"

"Don't come near me."

"Ok."

The next morning--Sunday--we drove back to the Pep Boys and had the module replaced (Roger paid). Ever the optimist, he announced that we'd be able to make it to New Orleans by 2, 3 at the latest, get the tickets, spend the night, have a nice dinner in the French Quarter, and drive back to Savannah in time for classes on Tuesday.

"Give me the keys," I told him.

"Why?"

"Because I have class at 9 am tomorrow, and I've already taken two absences; if I miss another class, I lose a grade point. As such, and because I don't feel like spending the next 10 hours with you, much less the next day and a half, I am going to drive us back to Savannah," I explained. "And we will be back in time for dinner." Which we will eat separately, I thought.

"I'm so sorry about all of this, D," he said, and reluctantly handed me the keys.

Now that the station wagon had its fancy new module, it drove like a dream. I did 85 MPH down the I-10 and we did, indeed, make it back to Savannah in time for dinner. And I didn't speak to Roger, nor did I think of him, until a year or so later, when (coincidentally, I hope) he and his mother came into the store where I worked.

"Mom," he said, introducing me, "This is the girl I was telling you about--the New Orleans one."

She was a sweet-looking, preppy woman in her 50s. "Oh, honey," she said, with a surprising familiarity. "I'm so sorry about what Roger did that weekend. How terrible it must've been." And she hugged me.

And then Roger tried to hug me. I didn't let him (to this day, I don't remember if we ever hugged the entire time we "dated"). "I'm still really sorry about everything," he said almost dolefully. And then he and his mother left.

It occurred to me then that this was the most drawn-out breakup I've ever had.

God speed, Roger. I hope you made it to New Orleans after all.

Michael Taeckens, Love Is a Four-Letter Word, anthology, true stories, heartbreak, Penguin Books