Dear Chicago Cable,
I’m leaving you.
I realize now–as your last bit of stuff from my apartment sits sealed in a box like so many bad memories, ready to be dropped off at your office (probably with your `secretary’)–that you never loved me, never really even respected me.
It took me years of anger and self-recrimination to see that ours was an emotionally abusive relationship–years of me sitting home alone at night, staring at a blank TV screen, or waiting on the phone forever as you kept me on hold to talk to other people first.
I thought the problem was me. I was unreasonable, expecting you to show up when you said you would or to have the decency to call. I was a shrew, willing to wait for you for only a small block of time, say between 12 and 4 p.m., rather than the nine-hour window you prefer. I was too fussy about the clarity of your signals, too concerned about what I had to pay to hold up my end of things.
Now I see that the fault wasn’t mine, though maybe I should have just been satisfied with the simpler relationship I had before I met you.
I had just moved to Chicago, all alone in an apartment, and you were around, looking like you had so much more to offer than the partner I nicknamed, affectionately, “rabbit ears.” The cavalier quality of my attraction sounds embarrassing now, but great relationships have been built on less.
And at first I loved, even craved, the things you provided. You kept me company through many a Bulls game and almost the entire run of “The Larry Sanders Show.” But soon I saw your arrogance, your greed, your steamrolling sense of self-importance–it was as if you believed you were the only game in town.
You were remote and controlling. Your system of fining me $5 if I was even a little late seemed cute at first, one of your role-playing games. I thought I needed a stern hand in my life. But with help from friends–you remember Bill, in the sandals, from Citizens Utility Board?–I soon realized it was draconian.
Just when I had come to understand your rules, you would change them on me. I needed constancy and support. An old-fashioned term for it might be “service.” But to get so much as a Bravo out of you, I would have to call and ask for it or suddenly look in a different place than I was used to.
I guess I never fully grasped your plans and terms, either. Yes, I wanted the basic package in our relationship, but I wanted more. I wanted the expanded package, and I wanted the premium stuff on top of that.
It looked on paper that I was getting those things. Each month, you would issue a statement summing up the relationship, making it all sound smooth. But my dreams involved a blade and a severed wire. My therapist helped me to understand the symbolism.
I haven’t told you this, and I’m not proud of it, but I cheated on you. Don’t you dare look shocked. With your reputation, I know I wasn’t even your only unhealthy relationship.
And I know you lied to me about other things, too. We had been together several years before I discovered that I knew you by an alias, a “subsidiary” name of your real, notorious one. Do the initials TCI ring any bells?
So I had a fling with a young rival of yours, a cute little dish whose wavelength made me think, sometimes, he was getting signals from outer space. Many’s the night you were both in the apartment at the same time. I felt overwhelmed, yes, but so alive! Ironically, the kid gave me a brief taste of what a real, adult relationship could be like. I was treated with dignity. I had options. I never heard hold music.
When it ended–he still had some growing up to do, and I wasn’t sure he was ever going to provide local service, if you know what I mean–you were less attractive than ever.
Then the bad times really started. You’ve probably been thinking this Dear John letter is as short on specifics as Karl Malone is on championship rings, so here is a specific.
Last winter, I was hip-deep in a work-related project, taping local newscasts every night for a comprehensive survey of them. I really needed you to be there for me, but I knew our relationship was in a rocky phase. I had just moved and when I sent you a check for some money I owed, it had gone to the wrong place, infuriating you, to judge by the letters I got.
I called you at least five times to explain the honest misunderstanding and make sure you wouldn’t cut me off. (My desperation sounds so pathetic here, in black and white.) You swore you understood. Then I came home from work to find you had lied again. You were gone, and you stayed gone for a couple of days. When my taping became fouled up as a result, it cost me some $200 to get the tapes from another source.
My intense anger is probably what brought you back so quickly. You seemed to get better afterward and even showed up a couple of times right as promised.
But then came the last straw. In one of your monthly letters to me, you slipped up and included a letter to others you were involved with, too. You acknowledged your faults over the years and swore you were trying to correct them. It was bitterly ironic: You said all the things I had wanted to hear, only now you were saying them to just about everybody.
When I told you it was over, you asked for one last meeting. You said you needed to reach closure, a kind of “shutting off” of our time together, and you wanted to retrieve your gear from my place. So I hurried home from work.
And I sat there between 12 and 6, the fool one last time. You never even called. And your secretary–or whoever answered the phone–told me I could wait for you the next day or simply drop off the stuff at your office. It was a fitting finale: I am, again, the one who has to make the effort.
Still, it isn’t easy leaving you. I have had to move out of Chicago to do it. Maybe I should be stronger, but I didn’t want to feel your snakelike presence on every street corner, in every living room.
We will always have “Larry Sanders.” But I suppose you should know that in my new town I’ve found somebody new. The name is Media One, and I really believe that this time it is going to work out.
