Smoking cigarettes with Joey

Joey, as I recall, actually looked a bit like James Dean.

Joey was his name. I know he was Indian (dot, not feather), and I think he lived in Columbus. I had moved in with my girlfriend, Kate, that summer. We got our own place. I remember holding her as she cried because there were dead cockroaches in the cupboards and the fridge smelled like paint (we got it replaced). I said we'd make the place ours. These were little things. The important thing was we were doing it together. 

She cheated on me with Joey, a guy she met on IRC, the same place she met me. I took her to the bus stop and picked her up from the bus stop, her mood quite different upon her return. I must have been incredibly stupid to think she was going to just hang out and have dinner with someone. He got her off. She didn't return the favor. That sounds about right for her. I should have kicked her out when she told me what happened, but instead I slept on the floor in the other room, my little bed trampled underfoot every day.

But that was just the first time. Joey came to visit. I opened the door and there he was. He asked to see Kate (Kat, I'm sure he called her). She was still sleeping. It was, like, noon. I roused her and said her friend was here to see her, thinking she would be horrified and tell him to go away. She was horrified, yes, then got into the shower. She didn't tell him to go away, though. 

So I sat with Joey in the living room and we talked and smoked cigarettes. Did we watch tv or anything? I don't remember. I just thought it was taking Kate a long time to shower and tell this guy to go home. And I remember liking the guy. He was soft-spoken and polite, and, even though he stole my girlfriend, I liked him. She got out of the shower and left with him. She tried to talk to me before she left, but I just went into the bedroom and turned the stereo up loud. She said she didn't know when she'd be back. 

I went to the mall. I drove from Bowling Green to Franklin Park Mall in Toledo, which was a considerable distance, just to get out of that fucking apartment — our apartment. I had to be around people, any people, people I didn't know, just to see faces and hear words that hopefully would drown out the thoughts in my head. No, it didn't do any good. I didn't go to the mall to buy anything, if that's what you're thinking. I wasn't going to sit around and wait for her to arrive back home, though. 

Driving my Jeep back to Bowling Green, I had the loony thought of driving into a telephone pole and ending my life. There wasn't much else on the drive home, apparently, that looked substantial enough. I'm pretty sure a telephone pole wasn't going to kill me, and I must have ended that thought with that obvious fact. 

I found her at her mom's house, still with him. I don't know where they went that night, but they ended up there. He passed out in the tv room. I was crying and angry. She said she did this so I would know she could behave herself with someone else, which, I thought, wasn't the point. You don't go see someone else when you're with me. You don't get fucked by someone else. You don't have to prove anything to me because you aren't getting in that car to begin with because you never had that conversation that led to all of that. But it took me years to understand how she controlled the whole conversation and how she got her way the whole time. 

Until I ended our marriage, that is. She made me feel terrible about that, of course. She felt rejected. I don't know how her rejection matched mine all those years, but I can safely assume it didn't measure up. Joey probably wasn't the first she had an affair with while she was with me. He wasn't the last, either, not by a long shot. 

The memory of smoking cigarettes with and being forced to make conversation with this guy has stuck with me. Because it is humiliating, even now. It wasn't the only time he visited, either. That's the most fucked up part, I think. She was always a little whore. How am I going to tell my son why I left his mother, that his mom was just a fucking whore? I'd rather be the bad guy who gave up on his marriage than have to tell him that. 

My incredibly trusting nature allowed me to sit through this and think, "This isn't really happening. This isn't what it looks like." But it was and it was. I was a good man, always giving the benefit of the doubt.

Depression is a horrible thing. I've lived most of my life depressed. One of those reasons is because I couldn't tell why bad things were happening to me. I thought I was a bad person, and I was not. I was an incredibly good man. I didn't deserve what happened to me. I don't know why it happened. All I know is I'm glad it's over and it won't happen again. Love shouldn't hurt. And it won't if you love the right one.

A note about this post: It's not like I don't feel moments of tenderness toward my ex. Yes, I have moments when I miss her, or, at least, having anyone around. It's impossible to spend decades with a woman and not feel those things. I don't consider those things love. It's more a recognition of the time we had together and what could or should have been, as well as all the effort I put into the relationship and the memories we made. I would feel the same tenderness toward a dearly departed canine. This particular memory of smoking cigarettes with Joey stands out because it was one of the most humiliating and painful memories. This happened in 1998 after I'd been with Kate for about a year. My love for her carried me through many times like this but was eventually thwarted by her "careless" and selfish behavior. It may look like it was my choice to end my marriage, but it was merely me reacting to how she treated me. No matter how much you love someone, you cannot change them. Only they can change themselves. It's my choice to remember the good stuff and hope the bad ones fade, not because I want her back but because as you get older, all you really have are your memories. Eventually, those good memories will fade too. 

I know I left my marriage in the wrong way. I hurt people. But God punished me. I lost my wife (which was intended), my son for a while, and my friend Cindy, as well as the support of my parents, among many other things. It's not for me to judge the fairness of what I went through, but it seems unfair to go from a painful marriage to the pain of divorce and all it entails. It's wounds on top of wounds. I pray everyone I hurt heals soon, and forever.

Thanks for taking this trip down memory lane with me.