True tales from Splitsville

Local notables share their best breakup stories.

FAILING GRADE

``I was dating this nutty, gorgeous, sex-crazed woman in Colorado. We had a fight one night, and the next morning, she faxed me a five-page breakup letter. I marked it up for grammar and spelling, gave her a D, and faxed it back." -- Tim McIntire, comedian

GOING TO THE DOG

``I was with this writer [in San Francisco]. . . . We had a mutual dog that we shared. I left a note on the dog's collar and left back to Boston." -- Pino Maffeo, Restaurant L chef

ACTING OUT

``I once had a break up with an actor that was actually most fruitful. He managed to get three whole songs on our first record. Never has a break up borne so much musical fruit. Actually, I thought about titling the first record `Never Date an Actor,' but it just seemed too obnoxious."

-- Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls

CEREAL KILLER

``On paper, he was great . . . but finally I was like, `I can't do this anymore, you smell like Cheerios and I can't get past it.' " -- Ally Donnelly, NECN reporter

FRIEND OR FOE?

``I was in a band with my high school sweetheart. My best friend would come to our gigs and hang out with us. I noticed that she and my boyfriend hit it off almost too well. . . . One night I go over to his apartment to talk to him about this and my `best friend' answers the door in nothing but one of his shirts. I was so stunned that I fell down the stairs backwards and twisted my ankle. They got married a couple years later." -- Monique Ortiz of the band Bourbon Princess

MEDDLING MOTHER

``When I was in high school, I dated a boy for four years and his mother hated me. She set it up so that I would see him with another girl at the mall, a cheerleader. I was crushed. I went over and slapped him on the arm and told him I would never speak to him again. Later, it leaked out that he was innocent, but it was too late. Can you believe that mother? I didn't attend my prom with the guy I had dated all those years." -- Kim Carrigan, WFXT-TV (Channel 25) anchor

TWO TIMES A LADY

``I was dating a guy in college for about three weeks. I went to his dorm room to watch TV. He was like, `I'll be right back.' So he left and never came back. After two hours, I left. As I was walking out he was with his girlfriend that I didn't know about, making out with her outside of his door. -- Giulia Rozzi, co-creator of ``Mortified," which runs the first Thursday of every month at Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway theater

HOUSE CALLS

About 16 years ago, WCVB-TV (Channel 5) anchor Susan Wornick found a house she loved in Dover. She tried to purchase it, only to discover that another buyer got it first. ``Guess who that was?" she says. It was CBS4 sports anchor Bob Lobel, whom she had divorced about a year earlier. ``Liz Walker told me," Wornick recalls. ``She said, `You know that house you wanted to buy? Tell me more about it.' So I did. Then she said, `You're not going to believe this. Bob is buying that house.' . . . We never agreed on a thing for seven years!" she jokes. Wornick, who says she is still good friends with Lobel, called her ex-husband at the time, and he insisted that he knew nothing about her interest in the house. ``I don't believe him," she says. The aftermath? Wornick bought a house in South Natick, about a mile away from her ex. Lobel couldn't be reached for comment, but Wornick says, ``Shortly after he bought the house, I heard he had [several] feet of water in his basement. I wasn't sorry about that at all."

-- Susan Wornick

DOCTOR, DOCTOR

``Worst breakup, no question, was third grade. Found my girlfriend, Shelly, behind the school playing doctor with . . . another girl. They claimed this was all in the name of science, which does not explain why they were both blushing profoundly. I'm pretty sure this episode set the stage for a life of sexual humiliation." -- Steve Almond, author

THE GLAMOROUS LIFE

``I styled [Creed singer] Scott Stapp's wedding in Miami last February, and I'd be talking to Jon Bon Jovi, Gloria Estefan, or [being] interviewed by In Style magazine, and my boyfriend would be calling me all the time. Then at a party in Boston someone thought I was dating a certain important person, I can't say who, who was standing near us, and said it in front of my boyfriend. The pressure got too much."

-- Salon owner Maria Lekkakos, who was crowned Miss Massachusetts USA 2004

BUS STOP

``After helping my college girlfriend pack her stuff and watching her drive home to a little rural town out in western New York, I realized I couldn't let her out of my life. She was going to a job in Chicago, and I just knew I had to propose! I jumped on a bus, ran to her parents' house, and asked her to marry me in front of her whole family reunion. Well, she said no. And that left me with the fact that she was from a town so small that the next bus back to Boston didn't come until the end of the holiday weekend. I spent a long, tense three days sleeping on a cot and getting looks from everyone that, I'm sure, said, `Lame-duck boyfriend.' " -- Rick Jenkins, Comedy Studio owner

DOWN IN

THE DUMPSTER

``After we broke up things would trigger memories. So I kept going out to the dumpster with all the things that would remind me of them. I had six trips in one year. It became routine. By the fifth trip, I noticed this homeless guy had caught on. I ended up seeing him in these T-shirts and with stuff that had been gifts I threw out." -- Comedian Steve Sweeney, on going through several breakups in a year

BY THE WAY, I'M BISEXUAL

``I was with a guy for a long time, about a decade. I pushed for a breakup. A couple of nights later, we went to a bar, just as friends. Then he said, `I guess I can tell you now. I'm bisexual. I could never tell you before because I thought I was going to lose you.' I remember I was drinking a margarita. After he told me that, I thought, maybe I need a vodka and tonic."

-- Anqunette Jamison, WFXT-TV morning news reader

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

``It wasn't a big explosive break up, just a series of events that chipped away at the relationship. I met a wonderful girl in Boston and six months later she moved to California. I moved to California, but my career takes me all over the place, so we were destined to have a long-distance relationship anyway. Then when we finally spent a lot of time together, it was obvious that we just don't match up as human beings." -- Mr. Lif, hip-hop artist

THE LAST DANCE . . . FOR A WHILE

``A year before my current fiance and I were in our current relationship, we dated for about a month. We went out salsa dancing for my birthday with some friends, and he broke up with me afterwards. . . . The beauty of that is I could forever hold the guilt over his head." -- Elyse Becker, managing director, ImprovBoston

HIT AND RUN

``I had 45 minutes to get rid of her. So I really had to just stone her and say, `It's over. It's over.' She then threatened to ruin me by telling all my neighbors I had given her AIDS. I'm not kidding. I told her that if it made her feel better, she should, but we'd still stay broken up. I watched `The Sopranos' and listened to the 17 messages she left on my answering machine, each one getting more and more vicious and threatening about ruining my life. And that was the last I heard from her." -- Filmmaker Eli Roth on trying to wrap up a break up before ``The Sopranos" started

UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS

``I married [my husband] when our relationship was already starting to fizzle out. So when I got home one night, I decided to test the waters and said to my husband, `Do you want to have an open marriage?' He replied without flinching, `Sure!' Right then and there I knew it was over. We owned a triple - decker in Dorchester. I moved upstairs and he stayed downstairs." -- Lynnette Lenker of the band the Stumbleweeds