What Oscar Nomination Day Is Like When Your Girlfriend Slept With A Nominee

Last year before winter break, me and “Amy” started seeing each other again after dating on and off for like three years, and while we were on we generally didn’t talk about what had happened when we were off. Except one night I was at home in my parents’ house and me and my parents watched The Hurt Locker, which was, at the time, a relatively unknown but critically-acclaimed indie war movie.

So me and my parents watched The Hurt Locker and we liked it and then after the movie I went to my room and called Amy to say hi and we talked for a few minutes about what we had done that day and I mentioned that I just watched The Hurt Locker with my parents. She sort of giggled and I said, “What [are you giggling about Amy]?” And she said, “Nothing — did you like it?” I was like, “Yeah, it was good, did you see it?” And she said, “No,” and I was like, “Why were you giggling though?” Then for like five minutes she wouldn’t tell me and told me just forget it (which made me decide that I wouldn’t rest until I found out) and then I finally persuaded her to tell me what she giggled about, which was that she slept with one of the three main dudes in The Hurt Locker when we were broken up.

And from then on I hated The Hurt Locker more than any movie, including Crash, because the Man Who Has Slept With Your Girlfriend is the natural enemy of the Insecure Man and any of his accomplishments are thorns in the insecure man’s side. Like imagine if your wife’s ex-husband won the Nobel Prize and you were a random fat shit with no direction in life and an apartment where you had to walk through your roommate’s room to get to your room — it would not be an ideal situation, right?

So I hoped I wouldn’t have to hear about The Hurt Locker anymore because it was a small indie war movie that would just finish its run at like Landmark Sunshine and The Angelika in the next few weeks and I wouldn’t have to be reminded of it ever again. And the next morning when my dad wanted to talk more about The Hurt Locker, I was like, “I don’t ever want to talk about that movie,” and he said, “Why not?” And I said, “I just don’t. I said what I had to say about it last night and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

And then on THIS DAY one year ago, The Hurt Locker got nominated for Best Picture and someone who didn’t know that Amy had slept with one of the three main guys in The Hurt Locker asked me about my Oscar picks and I didn’t mention The Hurt Locker and she was like, “What about The Hurt Locker though? I think that has a good chance,” and I was like, “FUCK that movie, it sucks, it has no chance, it only got nominated because there were 10 picks this year. And also they just wanted to stir up a narrative in the Oscar race to pit Notable Asshole James Cameron against his angelic ex-wife,” and then she didn’t bring up The Hurt Locker again.

And then a few weeks passed and I was increasingly needy and weird. Sometimes I would go to Amy’s apartment and make her listen to the Spiritualized album Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, the really sad one about a disintegrating relationship, and she would just go on her laptop.

:(.

And then Amy broke up with me and then I refused to watch the Oscars, and I woke up the next day and read that The Hurt Locker won Best Picture, and then subsequently I had some nightmares about The Hurt Locker which I don’t really remember now.

But anyway, the reason I mention this is that the 2010 Oscar nominations came out today and Jeremy Renner got nominated again, and I wanted to say that if there’s anybody reading this who is in a parallel situation because Jeremy Renner slept with your girlfriend while you two were broken up, I want to offer you my condolences because his career seems to have really taken off compared to those other two guys. And if you’re in an exactly parallel situation where you’ve met someone else and are happy with them, I’d say you should try to sit down and watch it, which is what I did two weeks ago, to see if it would bother me, and it didn’t. So I’ve made peace with The Hurt Locker. Time heals all wounds I guess, and it’s actually a pretty good movie, right?

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