"PETE DAVIDSON" AND THE ART OF BREAKUPS

My disdain for “pete davidson” was definitely, to some degree, rooted in jealousy. It’s a song one could only write under the spell of a gloriously messy love affair.

Rooting for Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson’s courtship was the equivalent of eagerly embarking on the Titanic a second time. Their (very public) relationship relished in the grandiose and saccharine, often riding the line between innocent anecdotes of Harry Potter marathons and tweets that reminded us mere plebeians that hot famous people have even hotter sex. 

Pete’s stoner aesthetic and Ariana’s iconic floor length ponytail were plastered on every phone screen and tabloid cover. Their relationship was intoxicating to watch, like witnessing history in fast forward. The image of Grande, swallowed in an oversized yellow sweatshirt and thigh-high boots, holding Davidson’s hand, is forever burned onto the inside of my eyelids. A certified mainstay of 2018 pop culture. They were in love and wanted the world to know it. 

Around this time, I was new to college and to love. Newly awarded my adult status, relationships were still something I was familiar with in theory, but not in practice. I can’t even say that high school was a series of rejections, simply because there was no interest in me at all. I wasn’t looked at so much as looked through. I was, and always have been, cautious and great at biding my time. I never had a promposal with wilting roses from the supermarket down the road, never held hands at a football game, never stared awkwardly from across the table at a local diner. I wanted, desperately, to feel wanted. Surely I had done all the necessary research. I had an arsenal of rom-coms, locked and loaded in the crevices of my psyche. I was a disciple, devouring details of my more romantically adept friends and their dates. Deeply anxious and an overachiever in all senses of the word, I equipped myself with movie-learned lessons and a legion of dating apps. I was ready for love and wanted the world to know it. 

While I lusted for new love and Grande relished in hers, she released her fourth studio album, Sweetener, featuring the one minute, thirteen second long song titled “pete davidson.” Stylized with all lower case letters, the song was chill but also not. Dreamy, vibey pop synths overlaid with declarations of soulmate status. Ariana’s cool girl persona was cracking and suddenly everything was coming to a head. ‘Ariana Grande the artist’ and ‘Ariana Grande the person’ each had suffered their fair share of public onslaught. The Manchester Arena terrorist attack and breakup from long-term boyfriend and collaborator, Mac Miller, meant her image and personal life too, it seemed, were steeped in tragedy. Pete Davidson in all his edgy, drug-enjoying SNL glory was an abrupt and incredibly intense addition to Grande’s persona. She posted tributes to Manchester victims alongside tweets about Davidson’s big dick energy. 

The addition of Davidson as embellished arm candy, in conjunction with her publicly speculated trauma, meant that immortalizing their love on a Pharell-produced track was widely regarded as cringe. Their relationship, in general, was divisive at best––a match gone awry, blazing and utterly alive––making either heretics of casual fans or cynics of the nonbelievers. Even prior to the album’s release, the mere presence of the title on the track list elicited rather strong reactions from self-proclaimed Twitter stans and casual listeners alike. Grande put herself forth for all the world to see and consume, and boy, did the world take Grande up on the offer. For all intents and purposes, she tattooed her lover’s name on her body of work. The classic harbinger of doom, the epitome of being too much. And when the couple did, in fact, break up a mere six months after, the haters were validated in their hate. 

Eighteen-year-old me definitely agreed with the consensus that Grande had committed a musical transgression. Logically, it seemed like the right stance to take. A song, especially when you’re an A-list artist like Grande, is decidedly permanent. She didn’t cower amongst metaphors and ambiguous allusions to maple lattes (cough Taylor Swift cough Jake Gyllenhaal). It was brash, bold. Stupid. 

On one level I understood that writing about love is part of the craft, and, if anything, I longed to experience a relationship bursting with that same level of raw, unmoored emotion as Grande and Davidson. It almost felt like yet another rite of passage that I was waiting to happen to me, waiting for my own taste of the devastating joy of lust and infatuation. And so my disdain for “pete davidson” was definitely, to some degree, rooted in jealousy. It’s a song one could only write under the spell of a gloriously messy love affair. It's cheesy and naive and marvelously romantic and I was left baffled at the kind of love that demanded to make itself known.  

More pressingly, from one writer to another, I was struck by her brazenness, by what I had interpreted as carelessness. I couldn’t comprehend why she would splay herself open so freely. Love songs may be common, yes, but not ones so direct and specific. To title the song after her lover felt as though she was calling out to the world, with all the passion she could muster from her five foot frame, that she was fully, unabashedly in love. She shucked off any chance of self preservation. Wasn’t she afraid of being wrong? She calls Davidson her soulmate, for crying out loud. She sounds so certain, and that certainty makes her vulnerable. Grande was relentlessly mocked on the internet, targeted and ridiculed for the meteoric speed of their relationship. Even though the couple was engaged, the overwhelming reception of the song was this persistent, sexist anger at Grande for daring to be so confident. The sheer audacity of the song lent itself over as the perfect punching bag for those enraged at her self-assuredness. Grande bore herself open to the embarrassment of proclaiming "forever"––only for "forever" to come with conditions and a deadline.

Since eighteen, I’ve indulged in a bit more of life. I’m in my final year of college, having experienced a literal global pandemic, and in a similar earth-shattering fashion, my first real relationship. After meeting on a dating app, my ex-boyfriend and I faced a year-long whirlwind of firsts together. For most of our relationship, I was drunk on the feeling of desire. For one, he too had never been in a relationship before. We were both late bloomers. So what? Gone was the expectation for perfection, of knowing what the hell we were doing. There was solidarity in figuring out all this love business together. We could be candid in our insecurities, talk freely of our less successful romantic endeavors. There was nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide, that the other couldn’t relate to on some level or another. 

Plus, the intimacy of firsts. Our first time spending a full night in someone else's bed, cuddling the night away. Our first overnight romantic getaway, our first time having someone to tell our families about. Holding hands while he drove, swapping clothes, writing love letters whenever we were apart. You can’t experience a first time more than once. 

As our relationship progressed from once-a-week dates to knowing which of his sweaters were most comfortable to sleep in, I loved being loved. I loved luxuriating in the comfort of knowing we had each other, of feeling safe and protected. I had someone to talk about my day with, someone whose arms made every unfamiliar place feel like home. 

And when it all came to a head––a looming college graduation in the near distance––suddenly, I understood. When we broke up, there was too much grief inside me. I didn’t know where to put it. I had no choice but to transcribe it, to excise the feeling from my body. I wrote and I wrote and no one was safe from the onslaught of the page, not even myself. 

Writing was a form of instinctual healing for a difficult break-up. I broke up with him, another fact that’s surprising, even to me. But he had held me in his arms, naked in his bed, and told me he didn’t see us lasting long-term. He had already made plans for after graduation, and I wasn’t included in any of them. Plus the ultimate cherry on top––he insisted we keep dating, that he loved me, that this was really great for up until graduation. Listen––my therapist would say a whole host of things about me, namely that I have a habit of keeping my needs close to my chest, of fitting myself perfectly in the pauses of conversation. I am, at my innermost core, a careful person. I always tuck my chair beneath the table, I have a soft spot for corners. I drive slow, I like to write because it gives me time to think before I speak. I am habitual and loyal to a fault. My therapist would not necessarily peg me as the breaker-upper of relationships. But I had grown wiser, gained this supplemental knowledge of love to add to my repertoire of rom-coms. And my ex-boyfriend took for granted the fact that I wouldn’t ever leave, that I was comfortable in the routine of one-sided loving. 

The breakup was scary and hard and awful. It was also the most gutsy thing I ever did throughout our entire relationship. 

There are no overdramatic Instagram stories to document our first, second, third dinner date, no archived posts for acquaintances to speculate over. No articles that name the other as our soulmate, no “pete davidson” to memorialize the moment. We sputtered out, an already dying flame. And as more time passes since we’ve split, the more I wish I had something tangible to attest to the feeling of first love. Feeble and capricious. Suffocating on happiness, sipping on loss. I’m not saying that I wanted a more theatrical breakup, per se. But playing it safe didn’t spare me a different fate than Grande. You love and you learn. 

The more I think of “pete davidson,” the more the lyrics stand out to me. The soulmate line is particularly eye-catching. “You know you know that you’re my soulmate and all that.” Grande’s open embrace of certainty in uncertain times, especially in the context of the last year and a half, is commendable and brave, I’ve decided. She was ahead of her time. And in casting her relationship with Davidson in a one-minute, thirteen second time capsule, Grande also suggests something far more interesting about love––there’s no rule that soulmates, or “the one,” have to last forever. Sometimes, they’re just for now. And that’s okay, that’s alright. During difficult nights, when the feeling of missing him is too much, I turn to Grande herself: “I’m gonna be happy, happy.” Hope, a prayer. I sing the words along with her and I know one day I’ll believe it too.

AUTHOR: Rose Diaz is in her fourth year at Brown and is constantly wondering why it rains so much in Providence. She’s studying literary arts and enjoys spending way too much time pursuing random bookstores in her small, completely unheard-of hometown of NYC.

ARTIST: Elise Carman