by Sarah Bess Jaffe

He invited me to sit down, but I told him I couldn’t stay long because I was on my way to meet my new boyfriend for a four-hour French film. My second ex-husband asked why and I just blinked at him. Because Ralph and I are together now, I told him, and my second ex-husband said no, he meant why would a film ever need to be that long, and I told him it was so that couples who aren’t doing so well could go out on the town without having to talk much and still want to have sex when they got home.