Same Old Song

For me, music is in the same category as people and dogs.

I like, even love, specific people. As a whole, I dismiss the rest.
I don't like dogs, at all. Except certain ones. Amani. Kazi. Deacon. Panda. Ginger. Kita.
They all had (and have) a charm that trancends their "dogness", and causes warm feeling inside me. The rest could vanish, and I wouldn't care.

I know people that love music. Even the horrible, overproduced, generic crap. They just love it.

I don't.

Music has to speak to me. It has to say something I want to say, but cannot.
I can drive around with the same CD in the player for months at a time.

The music I favor is mournful. Pleading. Self loathing.

And yet, hopeful.
Hopeful in that, by saying these things out loud, they will release their hold on me.

I listen to Counting Crows more than any man should. Everything they have ever recorded, I know. Even the hidden tracks that come 9 minutes after the CD is over, I know by heart.

Adam gives voice to things I face. He is an insomniac. He has had his problems with drink. He has had affairs turn sour. He has been a coward, and he has been brave. He has allowed his sadness to define him, at times.

He turns these challenges into haunting words, beautiful words.
He references things of beauty, and contrasts them to the darkness inside him.

I wish I could express myself with such beauty and focus.
I sit at this keyboard and type what I am thinking.
The thoughts are jumbled and by the end, I am writing about something entirely different than what I originally wished to expell.

My original thoughts that prompted me to write survive to another day.

Misdirected

I had every right to be furious with Les.
And I was... sort of.

I couldn't muster what I thought was an appropriate level of rage for her.

I was relieved.
It was almost over.
I could go back to what I knew best.
I could go back to being alone.

I was angry, but I couldn't focus it on her.
So I focused it on him.

My philanthropic gesture of educating his fiance was a backhanded strike at him.

Take my wife?
Try this on for size, Asshole.
Try and hit back.
I dare you.
Give me an excuse to rip you apart.

I needed a villian, and he was the logical choice.

If I made Les the villian, I would have to examine my part in what had transpired more closely.
I was in no shape to do that.


Years later, I am beginning to see the picture more clearly.
The fact is, everything that happened was ultimately my doing.

If I had dealt with losing May when it happened, I wouldn't have let a large portion of myself die with her.

If I had believed myself still worthy of unconditional love, I would have taken comfort in my family, not bottle after bottle of Vodka.

If I had not blamed myself for May's death, I wouldn't have seen justice in Cheryl's betrayal.

If I had not isolated myself, I would have heard the warnings of those who still love me.

If I had loved myself, I would have demanded it from the woman I chose to marry.


All of this has been my doing.
I took the blame for something I had no hand in because I couldn't face it as it truly was.
That burden changed me.
And I caused everything since.

I am the villian of this story.

Full Disclosure

There is no telling what someone will value.
What they will focus on.

I knew my part in all of this.
I knew Les' part.
I knew his part.

In my mind, the real victim was his fiance. She was blissfully unaware, planning her wedding to what she thought was a good man.

I knew her name. I knew what she looked like.
A little waiting and watching at his apartment led me back to her address.

I printed off all of the emails from Les' account.
I highlighted the dates.
I created a timeline.
I included a copy of my wife's cell phone usage.

And I wrote a letter to her, explaining why I was telling her all of this. I didn't want her to become trapped, as I had been.

All of this went into an envelope.

A weekend soccer tournament was being held in Charleston, 8 hours away by car.
My wife and her lover rode together. They were scheduled to be gone until Sunday evening.

Saturday morning, while their first scheduled game was being played, I hand delivered the packet to his fiance, at her front door. She would have a minimum of 9 hours to examine the evidence.

If she still chose to go through with her marriage, my hands were clean.

Revelation

Years of pretending to be normal makes it the status quo.

When she returned home, she had no idea that I knew.
When she saw me in the kitchen the next morning, she had no idea that anything had changed.
She had no idea what I was planning.

I was there, in the dark... waiting.
In the shadows.
Motionless.
Silent.

He left the apartment, taking his trash out.

I was less than a foot away.
He was oblivious to my presence.

I reached out from behind him...


And my mind became clear, again.

I didn't love my wife.
I didn't particularly like my wife.
I hated the life I shared with her.

The service this man had provided me outweighed any insult he had paid me.

I went home.

First Reaction

If he didn't have the same name as I guy I worked with, I might not have noticed.

We have instincts for a reason.
Gut reactions have saved my life since then.

A new character turned up in Les' stories about soccer. She went into great detail about how much she didn't like him, what an ass he was. She didn't do that with people that had actually wronged her. Each night, she returned home after soccer with another story about what a jerk Mike Baker was.

Each night she returned home a little later.

Suddenly, soccer was an every night of the week activity. Scheduled games. Practice. Pick up games.

I didn't really mind. I was pretty comfortable at home alone.

But it did cause an itch in the back of my mind... And I am a man that is inclined to scratch an itch.

She was an elected official in her league. This meant that she had files. I looked him up.
Name, address, phone number, social security number... photograph.

A trip to the soccer fields confirmed that there was no soccer game.
Her car parked outside his address confirmed that there was a game of another sort going on.
We had one computer, in my room.
A little guessing got me her email password.

And it was all there.

Initial flirtatous missives. Disparaging remarks about me. Insults to his fiance. Recaps of encounters together. Upcoming plans.

My reaction was one of anger and gratitude.
I was thankful that I now had an exit. My wife was having an affair. I could divorce her honorably.

My anger came from the insult. Not from her, but from him.
He had never met me. He knew nothing about me.
But he took every opportunity to insult and belittle me in his emails to my wife.

It was obvious that he didn't know me. If he had, he would have recognized that I am a potentially very dangerous person.

I am a gentle man.

I do not like violence.

That said...

I am exceptionally good at it.

Opening Salvo

We had been invited to an engagement party being thrown for a pair of Les' soccer friends.
I didn't know these people.
They were part of her life, territory I was persona non grata in.

The celebration included typical party games, including a variation on "The Newlywed Game".
Married couples were given questions separately, then had to compare their answers to those of their spouse.

I answered honestly.
Looking back, answering honestly was an act of passive agressive hostility.
At the time, I was just answering honestly.

"When was the last time you made whoopie?" (Bear in mind, these questions were culled directly from the TV game show)

Other couples gave answers ranging from that morning to 3 days ago.
Les said "not sure".

I answered honestly.
"5 months ago"

"What is your mate's pet peeve?"
I answered honestly.
"Me"

"How does your mate show affection?"
I answered honestly.
"She doesn't"

It was the beginning of the end.
With my answers, I started in motion events that would end my sham of a marriage.

Sometimes, the best thing for you is the hardest thing for you.

Solitary Confinement

I honestly hoped it would be different.

I won't go so far as to say I liked her.
I will allow that I didn't actively dislike her, in the beginning.
The absense of impulse to leave the room is not a reason to get married.

Our honeymoon was spent at a nice hotel by the ocean.
We did not engage in the activity that newlyweds are rumored to engage in on honeymoons, so we both came back with skin bronzed by the sun.

I would have bronzed skin for the entirety of my marriage.

My wife was not interested in physical contact with me.
Not just the act of making love. A simple, seemingly natural gesture, like holding hands in a theater, was brushed away with a harsh look.

After 6 months of wedded "bliss", Les declared that my considerable size was crowding her on the full sized matress we shared. At her direction, I moved into the spare room and slept on a futon.

I purchased a queen sized bed with money I had scraped together over several months. I set it up in the master bedroom while she was out. When she returned, I unveiled it to her, explaining that it would afford us both ample room to rest.

Shortly thereafter, she declared that my snoring was too much to bear, and I was evicted to the spare bedroom once again, this time on a full sized matress.

In time, I purchased a king sized bedding set, with extra pillows, so that I could sleep in a somewhat upright position. I had read that this minimized snoring.

After a respectful period of time, she simply stated that she didn't want me in the room.

I spoke to other married men and I discovered that I was not alone. What I was living was a typical marriage.

All the books, movies, sitcoms and poems... they were lies. Written by married people so miserable that they lash out by painting marriage as blissful, supportive, and nurturing... all to dupe unsuspecting fools into sharing their purgatory.

My sense of honor kept me incarcerated. I had made a commitment, and men keep their commitments.

By the grace of God, Les had never learned that lesson from her father.