Why I Broke Up With Lena Dunham

by New York

Most cities accept the chaos and disorder of a relationship with Lena Dunham as just one of the costs of having an expansive and expensive life. It took me a few decades to realize that I'd be better off without her and that while she would never leave me for, say, Philadelphia, that introducing her to London or Paris and then quietly not answering her texts for a while would not be the act of self-sabotage that I'd feared.

Look, I’m used to strained relationships. I am still into Fran Leibowitz. I don't roll my eyes at Sarah Jessica Parker or Matthew Broderick. Nathan is my Lane. Woody Allen is still home here and so is Patti Smith and Robert de Niro. Lou Reed is still real to me, damn it. I took Eliot Spitzer back. I might take Andy Cuomo back. I once had a throuple with Madonna and Basquiat and have zero regrets! And, crikey, I am no stranger to losing relationships to England. Benedict Arnold was mine first.

And, frankly, I think I was good to Lena, though she was always difficult. I mean, she starts her break-up letter to me by complaining about a heat wave that happened while she was in the womb. I know that early missteps can damage a relationship. I am still coming to terms with some of the things that Robert Moses did to me. But a warm August day before you were born, Lena? That's when you think things started to go wrong?

Well, I have another perspective and if you're going to air your complaints in the hallowed pages of The New Yorker, then I am going to tell the people what I think. Because there would be no New Yorker without me, Lena. It'd be called The Brooklyneer.

Things started out sweetly between us. You made a movie called Tiny Furniture and it made me fall in love with you. I had been through a lot that decade. We had the attacks and the recession and then the first wave of tech bros, Google buying DoubleClick, Chelsea getting fancy and less gay and people reading Gawker and XOJane instead of, you know, books. But your film reminded me that a well-to-do artist's daughter could still pull herself together to be the next Nora Ephron, while Nora was even alive to see it. You gave me hope, Lena.

And so I gave you Girls and really everything you’d need for a New York mythos around it. David Mamet’s daughter? Sure, even if he is more of a Chicago guy. Brian Williams’ daughter? No problem. And then somebody tangentially privileged like the daughter of the drummer from Cheap Trick. Then I had your male lead get a job as a dark Jedi. That’s how you build a Warhol-factory vibe.

And Girls was a good show. But I should have know there would be problems when HBO started your series and dropped Bored to Death. Hannah, sorry, Lena, when I get up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror, I see Bored to Death staring back at me. I see a city full of novelists, comic book artists, publishing executives and elves all pretending to be private investigators. But Girls wasn’t that side of me at all. Girls was death of print. That’s why “Hannah Horvath” will never be happy. You made me see that about myself, and maybe I took it out on you.

I know you didn’t set out to meet me. Your parents forced us together, especially your mother. I don’t know what to tell you. People raised in Connecticut love me because, deep down, they know that nothing is going to happen to them there. Even if you go to Yale, you have to come to me to find out what it all means.

It hurts that you said I made you feel like an unsprouted avocado pit, Lena. I’m not sure what more I could have done for you, really. A Broadway show of your very own? We talked about it. I was all for it. It might even be better now. The kids who grew up on Girls have the money for it now.

Like every ex, you go off on my rats and garbage, the urinations and defecations of my unhoused and the colorful idioms of my locals, but you skip all the good parts and Gershwin. Fran complains, too, but she’s always quick to point out who introduced her to Charlie Mingus.

Well, enjoy London, Lena. I hear it’s a big city with wide streets. Nice, if you’re into that sort of thing. I do want to be clear that I broke up with you, not the other way around. You can tell because I still have all my stuff, even your old place.

Have a nice life.

And, um, tell your Mom to call me.