“Post count,” I say. “One.”
“The guy who replied—IronJohn2220—he’s got a post count of over five thousand,” Alan says, and whistles. “Too much time on someone’s hands.”
“What’s next?” Leo asks.
“Let’s post your story,” Alan replies. “Smoky, we’re going to go with the Brother side of the website and stay out of the Bitch sections for now. Leo is going to be a reluctant hater, rage on simmer.”
“More sad than angry,” Leo supplies.
“I assume you already have the story drafted?”
“Just cut and paste,” Leo says.
“Go ahead.”
A moment later, he tells me I can find the story online.
My name is … actually, let’s hold off on telling you my name for now. Just call me John or Jim or Joe. I’m no one special, that’s the point. I’ve been reading through all of your stories, and I see that now.
I met a girl that I thought would be mine forever. I’m twenty-nine, and I met her when I was twenty-two. Young love. I thought she was everything you could possibly want in a woman. She was attractive without being model-beautiful, she was quiet but not weak, she had her own mind but was interested in what I thought too.
Good melding of the traits of the real-life Marjorie, I think.
We didn’t tumble right into our wedding either. We took our time. Kept separate places at first. Made sure we were sexually compatible—which we were then. She wasn’t slutty, but she was up for trying anything once. She wouldn’t let me finish in her mouth, for example, but she’d use her mouth to get me up to that point. Compromise a guy could live with, you understand? I’ve always thought I have a healthy sex drive, as much as the next guy, but I don’t have any particular fetishes. I guess that’s not the case for some men, but it’s the case for me.
We finally moved in together, again taking it slow. We were both aware of the statistics on divorce. She grew up in a single-parent home, raised by her mom because her dad was a loser who was never around. I grew up with two parents, but in name only. My mom was a mean drunk who used to hit me when my dad wasn’t around. We were in no hurry to screw things up by getting married. We took our time.
We lived together for almost a year before I proposed, and she agreed. I thought, Why not? We were really compatible. We shared the housework, we pooled our money and paid our bills, we had similar tastes in furniture and drapes—which is to say, I didn’t care and she did. We were happy, and we felt good about having taken it slow, about being sure we were making the right choice.
Even our wedding was a careful affair. We kept it simple and cheap but still made it special. We got married by the ocean, on a spring day. She looked beautiful, and I didn’t look half bad myself. Her mom came, and so did my dad. My mother did me the favor of staying away. We liked to joke that nothing changed except that we were both wearing rings now. We didn’t have a honeymoon. I guess we were both a little superstitious, not wanting to jinx it. We got married, spent the weekend at home, screwing our brains out, and went back to work on Monday.
I want to share a moment from that weekend. I know a lot of guys on this site are really angry, and I see a lot of talk about women being “bitches” and “cunts” and stuff like that. And I understand it, I really do. But I’m just not there right now. I can feel that anger, deep down inside (or maybe not so deep), but I’m still not comfortable calling her those names. In spite of everything she did to me.
It’s still too fresh, you know? It still hurts too much. Anyway, maybe that moment I mentioned will explain a little.
It was Sunday morning. Early, like, 5:00 or 6:00 A.M. I woke up for some reason, I don’t know why. The TV in the bedroom was on, and the whole place smelled of sex and sweat. I remember coming out of my fog and hearing an infomercial playing in the background. Something about getting rich in real estate. I opened my eyes and turned my head, and she was lying on her side, cheek against the sheets, watching me.
I remember looking into her eyes and seeing, really seeing, that she loved me. It was there, as naked as we were. It took my breath away.
“What is it?” I managed to ask her.
She reached over and stroked my cheek. She didn’t say anything for a few moments. “I was thinking about us fifty years from now,” she said. “Thinking about you with white hair and wrinkles.”
“Nice,” I joked.
“No,” she said. “I mean it. Life is short and long, both together. We’ve made a choice, driven by the hope that we’ll be better than our parents were. A leap of faith. I woke up next to you and I was looking at you and I realized, yes, I made the right choice. We’re going to make it.” She came to me then, snuggled under my arm, put her head on my chest. “I’m so happy,” she said.
We didn’t talk any more, but, God, I remember how good I felt at that moment. She drifted away while I lay there with my heart bursting in my chest. I was twenty-five, and my life had begun. Corny, I know, but that’s how I felt. It was like I could see the future, you know? A thousand moments like this one, years and years of sharing the same bed, waking up to say things to each other that no one else would ever hear or know. I had a partner, a second self, someone who’d always be on my side.
It was the first time in my life that I can remember not feeling alone. She gave me that. She took it away later, that and a whole lot more, but she gave it to me first.
Those first two years were probably the best years of my life. We had our fights, but that was expected. We fought about money, and chores, and sometimes we just fought because we were rubbing up against each other and that makes you bark. I remember one time, I went out and bought a new set of drinking glasses. We’d seen them at the store together, and I really liked them but she didn’t. I went ahead and got them anyway, and, man, was she pissed! We were screaming to high heaven, and she ended up smashing one of the glasses in the sink, so then I took her favorite coffee cup and broke it against the wall. We were both shocked at ourselves and ended up kind of standing there, hands to our mouths, going “Oh my God …” and then laughing ’til we cried at our own silliness.
We always made up, made love, and learned from our fights. It was something we’d actually do—sit down and talk once we were calm and try to understand the other person’s viewpoint. We’d admit where we were wrong and the other was right, and then we’d come up with a compromise.
Neither of us had an awesome job, but we were making enough money between us to buy a house. It was a lucky purchase too. It’s worth more now than what we paid, in spite of the market. We set up that house together. We were frugal, and that was part of the fun of it. We went to secondhand stores and garage sales, buying bookshelves that didn’t match the coffee table that we’d bought somewhere else. We had three or four different kinds of silverware, none of them a full set. Sometimes we’d make a weekend of it. We’d pack a picnic lunch and a thermos of coffee and we’d spend two days driving through the San Fernando Valley searching for treasures in other people’s castoffs. We’d find a park when we were hungry and spread a blanket and just … stop. Look. Take in the sun and the sky and the grass. Sometimes we’d talk about the future, about the kids we wanted to have. We agreed that a son and two daughters would be ideal, but a son was on the agenda, period, and then on other days we’d talk about grandchildren, or whether we’d get a Lab or a collie, and all of our other zillion plans. It took us some time, but we built the inside of that house together. We made it a home. It wasn’t the prettiest, and nothing matched, but it was ours.
It was an adventure. I felt good. I felt like I’d found my place in this life. I was set.
One day, without warning, everything changed.
I came home and she said we needed to talk. She was so calm, so reasonable, I remember that clearly. Not a sign of grief. She talked to me like an adult would talk to a difficult child, and she proceeded to destroy my life in what was almost a monotone. She’d fallen out of love with me, she said. It wasn’t my fault, she said. It was a gradual thing, but she was sure of it now, she said. She wanted a divorce. She wanted the house. She also said— and this is the worst of all of it—that she’d gotten pregnant a few months back but got an abortion. Because she knew then, already, that she was going to want to get divorced, and she didn’t think it was a “good idea” to have a baby if we were no longer going to be together. She said all of these things, one after the other, cool as a cucumber, just stating the facts with no embroidery. It was as if she was reading from a list that she needed to get through.
I should have said something then. Something smart, or cutting, or deep. But I couldn’t talk. It’s not that I couldn’t think of anything to say—I couldn’t speak. The pathways from my brain to my vocal cords had shorted out.
