I remember searching for her debut album in 1993. Few stores had ever heard of her, so to obtain “Exile in Guyville” I had to go to an overpriced indie shop and hand over a decent chunk of change. It was worth it. The album contained the voice of an intelligent, opinionated woman whose integrity seemed overshadowed only by her honesty. Naturally, I was somewhat smitten.
It was to my dismay, then, when a few years later I read an interview with Ms. Phair. She spoke of her boyfriend, the man that would shortly be her husband. I do not recall direct quotes, but the content was: "He played me just right. I was interested in him from the moment I saw him, but instead of pursuing me, he made me wait it out. He knew I was hot for him, so he toyed with me until I was about to burst. Had he just approached me outright, I probably would have lost interest."
I nodded my head in acceptance and placed the magazine back on the shelf; never learn too much about your heroes, for they will always disappoint you. Gone was the independent, intelligent woman I admired. In her place was someone that did the thing I always despised in a relationship: played games.
I believe in cellular memory. I believe experiences we have do not leave us, they become ingrained in our DNA in ways we don’t always understand. From time to time, our emotions remind us the events that exist as recollections, were once all too real. A particular song can raise gooseflesh across the skin’s surface; a specific geographical location causes chills down the spine. Personally, every time I attempt to write about my twenties, I grow tense. My muscles tighten, and my jaw hardens. Though long removed from everything that happened, I still grow quite cautious concerning six specific years of stupidity I lived. No one likes admitting to their failures or shortcomings, and after so many years of silence on my part I worry that if I attempt to spill my story, meticulous thought in examination will give way to an incoherent mess of emotions instead.
I shouldn’t be embarrassed by my past; logically, I understand I have nothing to be either proud or ashamed of. You live life by trial and error. Mostly error. You make as many mistakes as possible, that you may learn not to do so again later on. These mistakes most often involve romance. When you gain perspective in later years, you look back upon your biggest errors and feel like Roy Hobbes, saying, “I should have seen it coming.”
My twenties were wasted, tossed aside like a trifle.
In retrospect, the only way we actually understand anything, I now realize all too well what I was doing. Though I never publicly acknowledged it, my parent’s marriage was a disaster. I was raised in a household where my parents slept in separate rooms for most of my teenage years, and the word “love” was never uttered under any circumstance. That said, I have never believed the past determines the future. Just because someone has been integrated in a situation doesn’t mean they have to follow the same certain paradigms; statistics say children of an alcoholic are more prone to becoming the like. I grew up surrounded by infidelity and icy emotions; I became a romantic to actively counter that upbringing.
I put women on a pedestal in response to what I saw at home. I opened doors, kissed tenderly, whispered “I love you” when I meant it, caressed, cuddled, massaged, made love, asked about a woman’s day and listened to the answer, held hands in public and gave gifts randomly. The problem is, quite often I chose the wrong women to approach with my attitude. Instead of wooing women with healthy egos and self-confidence, I approached those who looked upon romance as weakness, placing myself perfectly for failure and thus perpetuating my belief all relationships were doomed to fail. My biggest mistake, and therefore most liberating and educating relationship, took place across my third decade of life.
When I was twenty-two I made my way to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After three irritating semesters at The Berklee College of Music, I felt that instead of walking down a path that created unrest in me, I should forge a new one. Unfortunately, I didn’t yet know what trail to take and I ended up in the refuge so many unfocused wanderers do, college. My high school grades had been sub-par, but grades weren’t as important to Berkelee as a deposited check, and they admitted me into their program. Once there, I improved my GPA ever so slightly enough to transfer to the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. (Motto: “We’re like high school, with tuition!”)
I did what many a college student does for money, I entered into the industry involving food service and began tending bar. When a restaurant on the shores of Lake Michigan opened a patio and expanded their staff, I was hired on to cater to customers wearing khaki shorts and Hawaiian shirts. A beautiful young cocktail waitress named Julie had already worked there several months by the time of my arrival. Though a trite, overused cliché, I was smitten at first sight. Julie was a petite blond; her head existed at just the right height for my chin to rest upon when we embraced. She had what a childhood nemesis of hers branded a snaggletooth, an incisor that was a little off kilter from the surrounding enamels that gave her smile an imperfection I found adorable.
I could attempt to create an embarrassing litany of other reasons why I was attracted to her, but such lists are both overused and unappealing; describing inner feelings to an outside party is both troublesome to write and tedious to read. Suffice to say, there are three ways men think of a woman at first glance. The simplest way is as a friend. We get an immediate sense there is something worth knowing, but it is not of a physical nature. The second reaction involves carnality. A stirring in our loins creates a fire in us that demands we ravage the woman in the most passionate of ways. We are unconcerned with her name or personality, there is only want. Then there is the third manner of eyesight, where with but a fleeting look a longing is created. We desire to trace the whole of the female form with our fingertips, gently caress skin, run a light thumb across an eyebrow, and brush hair back over the ear and cup the neck at the base of the skull. We imagine pulling her towards us that we may brush lips across lips and nuzzle our nose in her hair, breathing in the scent unique to her. It was with this third style of seeing I first observed Julie. From moment one, I wanted nothing more than to orbit her.
As Murphy’s Law would have it, Julie had a boyfriend. Not just any boyfriend, her first boyfriend; Julie lived with her high school sweetheart, Jim. Together they had overcome his multiple infidelities, physical abuse and sideline employment of selling (and sampling) drugs. In other words, they worked through all their problems thanks to her tolerance and acceptance, and Jim doing as he damned well pleased. So while my first instinct was that I wanted to be with Julie, the more I got to know her, the more I wanted to save her. I wanted to let her know she was worth better than she had, that she deserved more and I would show her what love could be. In reality, I probably wished to save my mother from her marriage; psychologists will have to determine that one.
Luckily, or unluckily, Julie looked at me sideways, also. Sometimes there is too much guesswork involved in getting to know someone; other times intentions are crystal clear. I could read easily the intent in Julie’s eyes. We became immediate friends, first spending time together within the safe walls of a group of co-workers, then gradually and with more and more frequency, were alone together.
I was immensely attracted to her, but couldn’t muster up the courage to brooch the subject of our mutual fascination. I both feared rejection and didn’t know how to approach the boyfriend angle. My childhood and all the negative influences I had endured instilled in me a perfect insecurity I didn’t know how to overcome. Plus, on the surface of things, our friendship seemed solid. Given my parents relationship, the appearance of “peachy keen” was all I understood. That people were supposed to communicate their feelings was outside my realm of comprehension. I was both happy enough I was around her, and passive enough to remain silently in longing. After six or so months of ignoring the issue, however, Julie was strong enough to push everything into the light of day. She told me flat out she knew I cared for her, and she demanded I admit to it.
Admit I did, and Julie grew silent and said she had a lot to think about. She did not respond with emotional confessions of her own, and I was left dangling for several weeks. There are many awkward and hilarious moments in movies when one character says “I love you” and the other responds incorrectly or not at all. In reality, such a situation leaves he who has confessed pained and confused.
Fortunately for my self-preservation, Julie eventually decided she did indeed like me, too. Sadly, her emotional interest in me was nowhere near enough for her to leave Jim. Instead, we began an odd, years-long and damaging sexual affair. We hid everything from our friends, families and co-workers. We were so good at it, that years later when everything became public knowledge, their shock was overwhelmingly genuine.
Julie was attracted to me, but didn’t know how to respond to being in a relationship while wanting another person. To deal with her confusion, she kept very strict rules when we intertwined. Like a prostitute, she wouldn’t kiss me during our liaisons; that would constitute emotional involvement and be considered “cheating.” Julie would come to my apartment, have me undress her, then lay back and make statements like, “I’m just going to pretend this isn’t happening” and allow me to have sex with her. A very romantic phrase to hear, and a great boost to my self-esteem.
For four long years we carried on in this fashion; she refused to leave Jim, I refused to give up on her. We would capture an evening together, and then I would watch her rush back to him. Knowledge the woman that just shared my bed was returning to another man created immense frustration and anguish in me, but I could never walk away from the situation entirely. I attempted to end the affair repeatedly over the course of our awkward waltz, but failed miserably each time in an embarrassing pattern of abject idiocy. Every few months the anguish of being with Julie, while not having her, would grow to the point I would break it off. I would tell Julie I couldn’t see her anymore; not as her friend, not outside of work, not at all. I even performed this action once immediately following sex, as I was going soft inside her. Before my climax, I had nothing but love for her. Immediately following it, the reality she was about to leave me hit like a ton of bricks.
No matter how often I was able to apply the brakes, however, like an alcoholic craving just another drink or an addict searching for one final fix, I would soon capitulate and call her. I kept convincing myself there was one more gesture I could make that would allow Julie see the light, or that this time I would be able to hold my emotions in check and achieve her level of indifference. Perhaps it was simple tenacity, like a dog with a Frisbee in clenched jaws, refusing to let go. Maybe it was a simple inability to accept loss. At the time it felt like something nobler.
In response to my pain and anger, I began throwing my cock into any warm hole it could find. As Julie considered her “real” relationship more important than me, I didn’t consider it cheating. I flattered whomever I could and fucked them ten ways from Friday, in their favorite positions and shot my orgasm wherever they let me, in mouths or on faces, between tits and on or in the ass. I tugged hair and screwed women while standing against a wall. But I also kissed my conquest after she spit or swallowed, and did so passionately. I honored the gift of their bodies, and cuddled afterwards and listened when they talked. I may not have loved, but I cared, and I tried to use care as an excuse to justify my actions.
My favorite partner during this time was a hostess at the restaurant, a lovely woman named Paula. Paula was an olive-skinned stunner, with curly black locks atop her head. She was a unique blend from mixed parents, but my ignorance and poor memory prevent me from remembering which part of the Asian Pacific Rim her ancestors hailed from. Paula was a good friend whose company I enjoyed, who also happened to be an extremely sexual woman. Paula and I had almost the same relationship as I did with Julie, only without the pain or confusion. Like Julie, Paula had several semi-serious boyfriends during our moments of intermingling. Oddly enough, however, whenever Paula was between relationships, she and I never became exclusive. Paula would be single a little while, eventually find a new boyfriend, all the while keeping me on the side around for extracurricular fun.
We also never had sex; Paula would only perform orally on me. I tried to enter her on a couple of occasions, but she always smiled coyly, closed her legs and opened her mouth instead. Once, we were even both entirely naked in my bed; I finally had convinced her sex would be a fun change of pace for us. I got up for a half a second to grab a condom, and by the time I turned around she had changed her mind and instead went down on me yet again. This twist was in conflict with how Julie acted; Julie would only allow me to have sex with her. While she was dating Jim, I was allowed to perform oral pleasures on her, but the favor was never returned. To Julie, oral sex was too intimate an action, and therefore the greater of two infidelity evils. To Paula, penetrative sex was too intimate, and therefore the worse manner of cheating. One trait they did share was that neither kissed me, or let me kiss them on the lips. Julie because while she was being physically unfaithful to Jim, she refused to betray him emotionally. Paula I believe liked to feel a certain amount of control over the situation.
Paula and I had a bizarre system for hooking up while at work. At the end of the night when it was time to clean up, I would grab the recyclables or garbage and head out the back door to dispose of it. Paula and I would make eye contact, and she would then leave out the front. Paula would loop around to the back, and under cover of darkness go at me on the side of the restaurant, outside of prying eyes. Sometimes she would come over for lunch when at her other job and I was between classes; sometimes I would visit her. On occasion, I would simply pick her up and we would drive around for a little while she did the deed, me dropping her off after finishing. More than once she performed her magic on me in the restaurant’s coatroom during business hours. That was always... interesting.
Maybe Paula did what she did because she liked the power she had over me, the control, knowing I enjoyed the actions of her mouth. Maybe she just enjoyed oral sex, and I was an outlet for her. I was safe, allowing her to work her magic and then return to the security of whatever relationship she was in. Either way, she was a kind and caring soul, and I always enjoyed her company regardless of whether or not we were being “naughty.” Julie knew Paula liked me, so Paula and I were very cautious and never seen alone together. In spite of our vigilance, Paula still became Julie’s internal nemesis; she once told me that if she ever found out Paula and I had fooled around, she would never speak to me again. A strange threat, I thought, considering that every time we were together she went back to Jim’s bed without so much as a single consideration as to how that made me feel.
Despite my dalliances, only Julie held my heart. Though I tried to find solace in the arms and beds of other women, I always returned to her. The worst moment for my emotional well being happened when I finally bore witness to the physical abuse Jim’s hand delivered. He was working one evening, so Julie invited me over to play. It had been several days since we had been together, and I was giddy in anticipation of the forthcoming physical interaction. When Julie answered my knock at her door, however, my excitement turned to horror, and my face showed nothing but shock. The most odd part of the moment was, it took Julie several seconds to realize why I was standing with my mouth agape before covering her purple and swollen eye; she had actually forgotten he hit her a few days prior. By the time I arrived, she was used to how she looked.
I was entirely unsure how to act; I was angry, hurt, and confused. That Julie treated the situation as if absolutely normal created immeasurable frustration in me. Seeing her so wounded made long for her all the more, and I desired to protect her and keep her safe from harm. Despite my anger and pleading, she still wouldn’t leave him. As was the basis for our relationship, as I could not tend to her emotionally, I did my best to treat her wounds physically. Defying all logical responses to seeing her abused, her touch still brought out an erection in me and we had sex in a reclining chair that night.
Everything came to an end when Jim lived up to his personality flaws and read Julie’s diary. She left it out; he picked it up and paged through it, growing angrier by the moment. Inside were all the sordid details of our liaisons, with active accounts of positions they never attempted and descriptive details of the two orifices below her waistline that I had entered, one of which he had not.
Jim exited the relationship immediately. He read the diary while Julie was at the restaurant, packed up many of his things, and left that night. Though she had forgiven him for several past infidelities, he was unwilling to forgive her but one. In a note or angry phone call, he told her he had been planning to leave for months, and everything in his actions suggested it to be true. They had been fighting more and more often; she was spending more and more time with me, leaving work, coming to my house, and returning to him sometimes as late as four or five in the morning. When she would ignore my beckons and go straight home after work, he wouldn’t even be there, he himself staying out until all hours of the night. It was a relationship in tatters. Yet a year later, in a random verbal altercation, Jim re-broke Julie’s heart by telling her he was hurt by her betrayal because he had been preparing to propose to her. Though nothing in that statement rings true, she believed it above all else, and became re-morose over her loss. I thought it a cheap shot, taken from a point of fanciful memory of their history, not the reality of what I saw.
One thing always bothered me about the spark that sent Jim running was Julie having left her diary out. That Jim would read it is merely another chink in his already pockmarked armor. Julie said she trusted him and claimed shock by his action, but for her to write out all the sordid details of our exchanges and then place it in public gives me pause. Though she said she loved him, and no doubt she did, sometimes people know they have to exit a damaging situation. By having an affair with me, journaling the details and not concealing the evidence would be a very passive-aggressive way of quitting the relationship without having to take responsibility for her actions. A pathetic sort of win-win, if you will.
With the thought she had consciously left the diary out for him to read, I believed it would be our time to shine. I was wrong. We continued on as we always had, physically engaged in private, emotionally entangled overall; Julie didn’t want to be seen by our friends as someone that jumped from one relationship to the next. Plus, no matter how much I made myself available for her, Julie was convinced Jim would return. After all, they were “perfect for one another.”
How we finally ended up together involved games and manipulation on my part. Though I’m not proud of it, I was willing to do whatever it took to finally hold Julie’s hand with all the world watching. While I had always been quite private regarding any female friends I might have bedded while waiting for Julie, I felt it was time to take one pursuit public. There was a waitress I believed I could bed, and I told Julie that if she wasn’t willing to be with me, then I was going to chase this new doe. The waitress was just out of a relationship and only required casual fun, so I made myself available, and we spent an evening together.
Gossip runs rampant in any restaurant, and within a week the waitress hung out with Julie and Paula. Paula told me about the powwow first, and it was surreal, like something out of a soap opera. Here were three women I had been with in one manner or another sitting in conversation, each thinking they were the only person to taste me. Eventually, the waitress got around to describing me, and our night together. Paula didn’t mind, and in fact laughed it off inside her mind while remaining cool, calm and collected on the outside. When Julie described the gathering, however, she said hearing of me with another woman made her physically ill. It was the straw that snapped the camel’s spine, just as I had hoped. Though for years I had had to endure her return to Jim’s bed, my straying ways hurt her self-esteem and she said it was time for us to be both exclusive, and visibly so. I was overjoyed, because I was ignorant. I didn’t realize the difference between her ego wanting to remain un-bruised and her heart making an active decision to be with me. In the end, I see that she never did actually choose my side; she just didn’t want to lose.
Julie, though always at odds with Paula, moved in with her, and found great power in having sex with me in Paula’s bed. Later, when Paula moved out, I suggested we have sex in the new roommate’s bed. We did, but Julie didn’t like it. There were no emotions involved, no empowerment, and thus we remained away from then on.
Though we were now dating, I was not allowed to meet her family. They despised me, so our union was kept secret from them. That I didn't meet them in our initial years makes sense; we were carrying on illicitly, so to have me in the same room with blood relations was too confusing. After their relationship ended, Jim, the ten-year favorite and heir apparent to the son-in-law throne, ran immediately to her parents and cried "betrayal!" He told all who would listen how her affair ruined everything, neglecting all the while to mention his own straying ways or pugilistic poundings. Julie never edited this tale; so eager was she to wear her scarlet letter and allow Jim his sordid affairs and swinging fist, that I was deemed the unwelcome outcast. That I never forced her to tell her family the truth was a sign of my own weak self-esteem.
(Only in one moment of honesty did she tell her brother Kerry she was seeing me. In ways I will always be grateful for, instead of judging, berating or condemning her, Kerry thoughtfully told Julie she had to follow her heart. If I was good to her, then that was all that mattered. I was never able to meet, or thank, Kerry for that kindness.)
Despite all my complaints, I still enjoyed our time together. As we had been best friends while she was with Jim, when we became public lovers all of our friends said it was a union that made nothing but sense. The easiest way to explain our relationship is to say that we just gelled well together. There were no fights; there was no drama. I was now completely loyal to Julie, so much so she actually inspired probably my greatest prank to date.
The restaurant Julie and I worked at was an oddity in Milwaukee; it was a business with a great location, but Roxanne reputation. True money ate elsewhere, while white trash making their one special trip a year would pop in and believe they were dining like a Rockefeller. During my entire tenure I poured one type of red wine; customers would enter and order a merlot, cabernet, "your driest red wine," "your top shelf red wine," and I would reach for the same bottle every time. In four years, I never had a glass returned or received a single complaint. I don't know that I went in with a lack of respect for the public, but working there surely challenged the idea we’re all good at our core. I’ve long since thought that everyone in America should spend a year in the service industry; civility and politeness would skyrocket if people got the flavor of humility on their own taste buds occasionally.
The eatery was corporately owned, and it had, I forget specifics, between thirty and fifty restaurants nationwide. The Milwaukee location is gone now; mismanagement from both above and at the local level saw to that. One man who helped drive things into the ground was a new general manager, someone sent in to "turn things around." He entered with big ideas and bigger attitude. He also arrived with a wife, a woman with a taste for alcohol, as chance would happen.
Within his first week of employment, the wife showed up at the restaurant pie-eyed and stumbling. Though obviously intoxicated beyond the point of service, she sat in the lounge and demand drinks from the cocktail waitress on duty, Julie. It was their first meeting, and Julie questioned whether or not she should serve someone so smashed.
(That was six, count ‘em, six “s’s” in a row. Boo-yah)
It was bad move by Julie. The wife threw a fit, her GM hubby got involved, and Julie was fired.
Just like that.
I was both furious, and immediately inspired.
I quickly made my way to the office and obtained several items: a box of corporate stationary. A box of corporate envelopes. A list of every single restaurant owned by the company. Most importantly, the corporate home office location.
My scavenger hunt complete, I drafted a letter, the lyrics of which I do not remember but overall was a little ditty sung in the key of revenge: "Due to recent events at our Wisconsin location, spouses of general managers are not allowed to drink on company property, and are furthermore not to be on company property while inebriated for any reason." No names were mentioned, but the gist did exist; something happened in the city of breweries involving the new GM and his wife.
I had a friend who lived in the same California city as the corporate office, so I made up my thirty (to fifty) letters, sent a package to mi amigo, and she plopped them into a mailbox. Within days, every restaurant in the chain started receiving said memo, on corporate letterhead, in a corporate envelope, from the corporate zip code.
That it was a fake was no doubt determined rather quickly. But for the few hours or days between reception and double-checking, it had to have been believed true. Regardless of the eventual reality coming to light, everyone in upper management all across the country knew the wife in Wisconsin was a boozehound who needed to have tracks covered by her husband.
I quit a few days after the letter was mailed.
I believe the GM was fired within the year.
Julie took her newfound unemployment as an opportunity to go back to school. She enrolled for classes, then decided to study abroad for a part of one semester. For several weeks, she traveled through France and Italy, drawing, sculpting, and unfortunately for me, meeting men with exotic accents.
When she returned from the trip, Julie was different. She was on edge constantly, easily agitated. She was less affectionate and somewhat distant; many of my physical advances were met with a brush off rather than mutual embrace. Had I been intelligent, I would have understood the signs of guilt and confusion for what they were, but it wasn’t even on my radar. Even when she started communicating with a Frenchman she said was “just a friend,” even when she told me she sent him money to help pay his phone bill because their cross-continental conversations were so expensive, at no point did I want to even begin to open my eyes to the truth: she had been unfaithful.
Julie’s behavior changed so much that when Milwaukee hosted its annual Harley festival, she acted a wild child. She began drinking more and then began exposing her breasts to strangers as payment to sit on the back of their bikes. I was working when she told me of her girls-gone-wild ways; her voice was aglow and I could picture her smiling as she spoke. I grew silent. I remember sitting with the phone to my ear for several long seconds, wondering how to respond. The words that came out of my mouth surprised even me.
“Are you trying to get me to break up with you?” I asked quietly.
I didn’t know where the question came from, but it was all that made sense. She was drinking more, constantly lamenting her return to the states, and now flashing her breasts in public. Meanwhile, every little thing I did was far from magic; in fact, Julie lashed out at me in anger with surprising frequency, something she had never done before.
“I don’t know,” Julie answered.
Over the course of the next ten minutes, she explained to me that she jumped into our relationship too quickly, that she needed to be alone to get her head together, and that she wasn’t going to date anyone for the next two years.
“I need to be completely independent,” she said.
All I could muster up in response was, “I love you.”
I felt those words should be enough, that like in many a Hollywood movie, love would emerge victorious over all evil. With but the uttering of the phrase, she was supposed to see the error of her ways and change her mind.
She demurred to do so.
And like that, we went back to square one. When you watch a horror movie, you know where the killer is; you scream, “Don’t go in that room,” but the characters on the screen do not listen. Much like one of those doomed actors, I was trapped by my emotions and allowed myself to reside in the background of Julie’s life once again. We began our old pattern of not dating openly, while still having sex on the sidelines. I convinced myself this was just another stage to the game, and thought all would eventually be well again; hell, we had acted out the majority of our relationship in this fashion. It was par for the course, the two of us, intractably circling around one another, unable to escape.
I lavished whatever gifts upon her I could that final summer. A computer, a TV, a radio, and when fall reared its colorful head and she needed it, a loan for her college tuition.
At the same time, unknown to me, she carried on her friendship with the Frenchman. After hearing she was now single, he decided that what they had wasn’t enough and gave Julie an ultimatum: either date him, or never speak to him again. Julie came to a conclusion quickly; when she told me of it she was giddy with excitement. Julie decided to date him.
I have no words to explain my emotions at that moment. Not just because of what I was being told, but the manner in which the information was presented to me remains insensitively shocking to this day. Not only was she animated and happy, she was surprised by my shocked reaction. I wasn’t happy for her, I was actively upset. Heartbroken, as the sensation is known.
Julie grew angry with me; wasn’t I her friend? Wasn’t I overjoyed she found someone? I should be high-fiving her and hugging her in all our platonic glory! I reminded her that she was supposed to be single for two years, and she looked at me as if I was crazy. Like a window-licker, I had assumed we would spend those two years dancing our silly dance of together/apart, and then end up entwined again.
I remember very well what happened after that, and if I thought I grew tense when first attempting to write out this tale, the hesitancy in me now is murderous. Every fiber for my being calls for me to lie, to make up a fanciful ending where I stoically accepted my fate and walked away like a man, but that’s not what happened. Instead, I chose the embarrassing and pathetic path of holding on. Describing what took place will make no sense to someone who has never had such an experience, but I will do my best.
The next day, I was taking a shower. I wasn’t so much washing myself off as standing under flowing water, dazed by the previous day’s information and wondering if it was all a sick dream I would soon wake up from. Without warning, a power washed over me. My entire body tingled, and a force from outside me spoke inside my head, saying, “Tell her, now. Tell her everything, and win her over.” I did not so much walk, but something influenced my body for me, moving me from the shower to the dining room to retrieve my phone. Naked, dripping wet and energized by an unfocused electricity running riot through my body, I called Julie at work and vomited up my emotions. I told her how I felt, how I had always felt, how I wanted to meet her family and charm the resentment they felt for me out of them, to show them how much I cared about her and could use that to win them over... Most likely, I babbled unintelligibly for several minutes before Julie got a word in edgewise.
“I have to go,” she whispered, her voice a mix of cautious and indifferent. “We can talk about this later. Pick me up after my shift.”
I was slightly humbled, but not defeated. I immediately dressed my best, went out and gathered up a dozen roses, and navigated my way to her workplace. Julie came out, gave the roses a resigned look, and we drove to her house in near silence.
At her house, we went into her room and she told me to have a seat, she would be right back. She turned to leave, then paused. Julie turned back, reached down and scooped up a pile of hand-written letters sitting on her coffee table, and bundled them up.
“I don’t want you reading these,” she explained.
I was confused, and felt defensive. While I understood Jim had betrayed her trust, I never had, and never would.
Julie asked her roommate for some privacy; was there somewhere she could go for a little while, so we could sit in the living room? Julie’s bedroom was a place for intimacy and privacy; to me, it was a room we made love in. To Julie, it was an area I was no longer welcome. Little did I realize this at the time.
We retreated into the living room, where she told me it was over. We could be friends again in a few months, if I wanted to be, but we would no longer be lovers. She had moved on.
I kneeled in front of her, and begged. I put forth the same demand as the Frenchman, saying that was unacceptable; I couldn’t be just her friend, I wanted us together. Julie shrugged, at a loss for words.
I laid my head in her lap and cried. Not movie tears, where everything is touching and people look beautiful as a single wistful tear rolls down one cheek, but sloppy, mucus-inducing, body wrenching sobs.
Julie stoically stroked my hair, and when I was finished, showed me to the door. She told me to call her again when I was ready to talk; I told her, not in anger but anguish, that that moment would never come. I didn’t have it in me to be friends with her. She reiterated to call her when ready.
And that was that.
Five days later, I turned twenty-nine.
Happy birthday to me.
For the first two post-Julie weeks, I didn’t sleep or eat. I lost thirty-five pounds and on four occasions cried so hard that I threw up stomach acid. Over the course of the next few months, through our mutual friends, I discovered that not only had the Frenchman come to visit, he had done so over Christmas. He got to both meet and spend the holiday with her family, people I had never been allowed to meet or interact with. They began talking marriage almost immediately; Julie wanted to move to France.
My first step towards healing, then, was to carve myself out of the lives of our Venn diagram friends. Given I had lost friends through geographical displacement my whole life, I departed the clique quite casually. To this day, I do not regret or feel even the slightest bit of bad about it. I told everyone it wasn’t enough to ask them not to talk about Julie, seeing them reminded me of her. I have to admit, part of me was confused by the continued loyalty they threw her way. Given her infidelity and theft—repayment of the tuition loan was something that happened in several small installments, then stopped abruptly, leaving my bank account slighted—it seemed to me they shouldn’t want to be around a person like that. But, we all live our own lives, and rarely do we decide our friends based on their actions towards others, we see in them how they treat us. Since I didn’t want to make demands or place anyone in “the middle” of anything, I opted out. I couldn’t live my life with the ghost of Julie around every corner, her image in every friend we shared, ready to draw memories out of me and set back the healing process every time I inched forward.
I also started seeing a therapist, Roberta, who was beyond helpful and informative. She rightly realized that my torment over the loss of Julie was rooted in something much deeper, and we worked to find it the best we could. For the first time in my life, she got me talking to my family. Like most people, when I entered my teen years, I did so surly. I took resenting my family to unheard of levels and by the time I got into my twenties, ignoring my mother, father, and sister felt as natural to me as breathing. When I was twenty-five, my parents mixed it up in an enormous release of the problems they had been neglecting for years. It was Christmas, which was an especially nice touch, and my mother was in the kitchen, screaming and smashing dishes. My father was either throwing her clothes out on to the lawn, or around the house, details are sketchy. I was in my room, wondering why the hell I had even bothered coming home to visit, when one of them finally shouted out the “D” word. My mother was already living in Madison part-time—she had gotten a job there and came home on random weekends—and with both kids out of the house, there was no need to put on appearances anymore. Freedom was a William Wallace reality my mom felt was within reach, and after serving a quarter-century sentence of unhappy, she went for it. Whether or not either of them looked to me for approval or emotional support during that time I do not know; I was as neglectful a son as I could be when they might have needed me. So as you are trained, so as you become. But, with the prodding of Roberta, I finally talked to my parents. I discussed our always moving, my always losing friends, the icy chill surrounding their marriage, their infidelities, anything and everything I could think of.
During one conversation, my mother mentioned something in passing, a sentence almost an afterthought to whatever her focus had been. She said that other than the one instance when I was six, my “abduction,” she could not recall a single time where anything other than extreme physical pain caused me to cry. That moment aside, no amount of emotional duress seemed to create any stirring in me; in moments of stress or emotional hurt, I was even keeled to almost the point of stoicism. To Roberta, this gift of information was a godsend. It explained much about my current state of mind, and fueled her approach in helping me. It meant everything I was going through wasn’t entirely about Julie; she just happened to be the catalyst for a release of twenty-nine years of pent up emotions. Julie represented every friend I had ever lost, every bedroom I had to abandon.
With this development, I discovered that losing Julie was simply my way of proving exactly what everyone feels about themselves at some point in time: no one will ever love me. It wasn’t enough for me to believe such silliness, I had to verify it and in Julie found a woman willing to help me down the path to certainty. Roberta then helped explain situations I was too wrapped up in to understand clearly, such as why Julie didn’t remain with me a while after Jim left her. At the time, I saw his departure as my opening; now it’s all too obvious how myopic that vision was. Julie turned to me not out of want, but desperation. I was her rebound; the fact we had been together for years before the opportunity to use me didn’t matter a whit. The hardest thing for me to accept when Julie eventually left was: she never chose me, she fell on me. I was more than willing to brace her descent, and she was all too happy to have a warm body to cushion the collapse. Once she dusted herself off and was able to stand upright again, she walked off; that she did it by shifting into the arms of another while we were together was a nice twist in karma's favor. I may have thought I was justified in being the other man while she was with Jim, but in the cosmic scheme of things cheating, is cheating. I was a part of a betrayal regardless of circumstance, and it came back to haunt me when Julie was ready to escape our relationship. To her, it was only natural to find someone new before releasing someone old; she never had to be alone, she never had to feel unloved.
About eight months after our final night together, while driving down Prospect Avenue on Milwaukee’s East Side, I passed Julie. She was walking along the sidewalk, holding hands with a man I did not recognize. Though I had been making considerable progress with Roberta, not only the sight of Julie, but the sight of her with yet another lover, brought home all the pain I had been working so hard to escape. On an emotional bender, I called Julie and asked her if she would attend a therapy session with me, that we might talk in a neutral environment. She was agreeable, so I picked her up before my next meeting and had an eye-opening experience. Julie spent the entire hour alternately angry—upset with me for still being hung up on her—and being silently defensive. She was so negative, the following week Roberta asked me as gently as she could, “What did you ever see in her?”
I asked Julie only one question the entire hour; why did she leave? Her two-word reply and the only explanation I’ve ever received was, “We’re incompatible.” She expanded nothing beyond that, and on the ride home admitted to attending the session for two reasons; to hear what lies I was telling my therapist, and to tell her side of the story. Considering she said precious little when given the opportunity, to this day I have yet to understand why she joined me that day. I did discover, however, that the Frenchman had broken up with her after only several months; apparently a cross-continental relationship wasn’t going to work for him. Instead of re-considering her once-wonderful plan of being alone and independent for two years, she leapt right into the arms of yet one more man. I silently hoped he was wiser than I, and that he knew what he was getting into.
This has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but it is a niggling little memory that always fires across my synapses when my mind wanders to Julie. On January 26th, 1997, the New England Patriots met the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl thirty-one. U2 had just announced a world tour in advance of their album “Pop,” and when halftime came around, I made mention that they would have made for a fantastic mid-game show. Julie was offended. Though neither xenophobic nor a right-wing conservative in any way, shape or form, Julie stated the idea of an Irish band playing at the Super Bowl was absurd.
“The Super Bowl is an American ritual,” she stated. “It needs to be a celebration of American music and traditions.”
We actually got in a mini-argument over the idea, which I found entirely confusing for two reasons: one, Julie wasn’t into football, and two, Julie really liked U2; we actually attended their PopMart concert at Camp Randal several months later. I couldn’t understand why allowing the biggest band in the world to play at the biggest sporting event in America could be a bad thing. In fact, I thought it made nothing but sense. Julie adamantly argued otherwise, and we left the situation at a stalemate.
Turns out, I was right. In 2002, U2 was asked to play the Super Bowl halftime show, and not only was it the most watched halftime ever—ratings normally dip during the game break—in 2009 Sports Illustrated rated it the best halftime show of all time. So maybe Julie and I actually were incompatible; I was ahead of the curve, and she behind it.
Either way, my final manner of healing back then was comedy; the stage was my only escape for about two years. “Fifteen minutes minus pain,” is what I called it. Wherever or whenever I could take to the stage and work on the craft that had just captured my attention, I did. The stage was a sort of drug back then; the high would allow my mind momentary respite from the damaging thoughts racing around at near NASCAR speeds, and then they would all come crashing together full force the instant I waved by goodbye to the audience.
My largest short-term problem was coming to grips with the fact the one person I used to talk to daily was the one person I was no longer allowed to call, period. I once read stories of war veterans, men who had lost limbs and awoke at night to phantom pains, scratching at limbs long since dust. It made me wonder how long I would itch for an empty bed and missing person. My long-term challenge was trying to understand the force I felt while showering the day after being dumped. Up to that point, I had not sensed much in the way of religion, but when the energy overtook control of my body and mind, I took note. Something had done that, some other power, and I threw all my faith into the idea that all would be well with Julie because of it. When all did not work out, not only was I destroyed by the breakup, I felt betrayed by God. I held a bitterness in my heart that something so commanding and encouraging could have been so wrong and betrayed me so easily.
What I came to understand is the “God Moment” was both honest, and a necessary part to healing. When Julie and I parted ways, the Internet was still in its infancy. As it grew into an untamed beast in the new millennium, people discovered they could trace their lives all the way back to childhood friendships. They also found they were able to re-discover old lovers. This can be tricky, as anytime the heart is introduced to nostalgia, the “What If” game might be played. “What if we had stayed together?” “What if we still have that spark we once did?” The questions are asked by single people, those within stagnant relationships and even occurs among the happily married; they look at profiles of former flames and see if an attraction still exists. In 2009, with Facebook at its zenith of popularity and social networking on line exceedingly popular, the term “retromance” was coined to describe this phenomena.
I have been fortunate enough to never have any curiosity for this game; there is no need for it. I have no lingering loyalties to Julie, and I believe the “God Moment” is to thank for that. The phone call, our evening conversation and my sobbing into her lap were a purging; I had emotions inside me that needed to be released from my system. With them gone, I have never had to look back and wonder, “What if?”
(I have, once or twice, Googled Paula, but was never able to find her. Such is life.)
When I told Julie I would never be able to be her friend again, I meant it. Back then I was broken hearted; today, I just don’t believe I would have anything to say to her. The pain is gone, but the memory of her indifference and anger remains; to this day, the fact she was actually upset for loving her remains somewhat offensive to me. I also don’t blame Julie for anything, as I may have once; I understand all too well the decision to pursue her was always mine. I made myself available, and though she never chose to be with me, she also didn’t want me to be with anyone else while she was alone. I fully believe that she did like me for a while, but she loved Jim, and that made all the difference.
Sometimes I wonder if she ever learned what it’s like to be used and tossed aside, but maybe it wasn’t her role in life to feel pain. Maybe she was born blessed with the ability to weave in and out of the lives of others, allowing them to learn about themselves. I don’t write that to attack Julie, or to say, “Look how mean she was to me.” The fact of the matter is, someone like Julie is all I was ready for at that stage of my life and immaturity. I fully believed I was second best and deserved to wait for her, which proved futile.
Part of the problem in any failed relationship is that willingness to wait. By giving yourself up to waiting, you are giving up power. Power above all else is one thing that should be shared equally between any two people interested in eyeing the horizon together. If you are ever the stand-by friend, the best friend that does and says all the right things to the person you want, the one you’ve seen win in so many a Hollywood movie, you’re wasting your time. Your heart can convince you otherwise, but you're wrong. You’ll always be wrong, as you've already lost by treating yourself as second best.
A weak foundation holds no house. If a relationship begins, even if only for a mere moment a merger is sparked by power and games, then no matter how much truth you pour into the union you will always be sailing towards disaster.
Just ask Liz Phair.
