my careless contagion

50 Ways to Say Goodbye is a good, albeit silly, song. I chuckled when reading the lyrics , but the song deals something most men have unfortunately done, which is explaining what happened to someone who was formerly a big part of their lives. People want to know why it happened. Or they're dying to know but are too polite to ask. Or they already made up their minds (in my case, I was usually the villain). You have no idea how many people wanted me to be the bad guy. It was comical until it wasn't. I must have a sinister look about me.  I just thought it is a fun song. It was released in 2012, so not throwing something shiny new out there. Anyway, I am on TikTok a lot (it's kind of a problem). There are some compelling accounts. One I follow is called hoe_math, which explains how modern, feminist women think and conduct themselves. This song, combined with one of those posts, got me thinking. When a woman dumps a man, is she required to tell him why? I think that's fair,...

Ah, summer. I used to know a girl named Summer, but this isn't about her. This is about the season (though if summer had a gender, it would be female). Where I live, summer does not last long. My joke is that it ended July 4, and then begins the slide toward fall, my favorite season. Basically, it lasts about six weeks, but no calendar will tell you that. Still, summer has such lovely qualities, and this summer has been especially long and summery. Here in the Black Hills, summer is tourist season, but even those who live here can celebrate its specialness. People come here to recreate in a place that isn't so scorchingly hot. It's true. Many homes here don't even have air conditioning because it cools off enough at night they can simply open their windows for cool sleeping and then close them again in the morning to keep their homes cool during the day. (Naturally, I am the exception to the rule because I have a small air conditioner for my tiny apartment, mainly be...

Men have probably rhapsodized — ecstatically — about women as long as they have had the language with which to do so. Women are truly special, created because God felt man should not be alone. They weren't formed from a blank, so to speak, but from the template of Adam. As such, they fill a void in man. I've known the lack of a woman most of my life. Furthermore, I've known the lack of a good woman my entire life. A good woman fills a man's void. A less-than-good woman breaks a man and makes him wish he had a void in his life. But let's not digress so soon. I have been given the rare gift of retrospective insight. Though it is too late in life to do me any good, it is nonetheless a gift. Not everyone gets a chance to see so clearly their life's many mistakes. Perhaps one of my biggest mistakes was choosing to spend my life with a woman who was no good for me. It is easy for me to say life would have gone better had I made a better decision, but, as t...

It's a long-running joke. What do women want? Not even they know because women — all of them — are a mystery. A big, beautiful mystery.  It's no secret I have very little experience with women. I have experience with one woman . She was really my first serious girlfriend. I basically moved in with her the night I met her. Okay, we talked for about eight months on the phone and over the internet. But, really, I showed up and that was it.  So my first real relationship was full-on, all the way, live. And within a year, it was essentially over. She cheated on me shortly after we moved into an apartment after living in her mom's house for several months. I saw that infidelity as a test, like, she wants to see how much I love her. But, really, she was just an asshole because the testing never actually stopped. She abused my love until I no longer loved her. And that allowed me to engage in a lot of behavior (some self-destructive, some destructive to our relationship) I w...

  Netflix offers a mind-boggling assortment of garbage shows, many dark and twisted in nature. Basically, it's perfect for me. Except when I don't want my mind getting dragged down yet another dark corridor to some predictable end. Enter Taylor Swift's Reputation Stadium Tour!  This show captures Swift's final performance of her Reputation tour at Dallas. Her entire tour was stadiums, in fact, which is a testament to her wide-ranging appeal and popularity. By contrast, I've only seen one performance at a stadium — the Beastie Boys in Cleveland (during their Hello Nasty tour, I believe). They played Egg Raid on Mojo , one of their early punk songs, as I recall. I don't remember much else except we were far away.  Okay, I know Swift can make a good pop song, and traditionally I don't care for pop songs, but there's no reason I'm sitting in my recliner crying as I watch her perform. Suddenly I was alarmed. What's happened to me?   I don...

  December 16, 2016, was the day she came back into my life. In the following two years, I've seen a whirlwind of changes. I was so happy she was back in my life. As of this writing, she is not in my life anymore. Of all the changes I've seen in the last two years, this is the saddest. I thought once we started talking she would never be out of my life. It's okay, though. My life has taught me to live with the lack of things. And it was too good to be true anyway.   There was a change that took place in me on a recent Sunday. I sat alone in my apartment and something broke in me. It was a giving up. It was a letting go. Whatever you want to call it. I realized something that I should have seen before but didn't.  Stepping back and looking at the carnage from two divorces is sobering. If I could have done anything to help any of those in pain, I would have. What I didn't see was that I was perhaps the one most affected, the most destroyed, the most hurt by t...

You're amazing. You must be like this Greek god — beautiful and chiseled of stone. I'm down on my knees again, begging for you to wake up, begging for you to take your rightful place and set things straight. I'm praying for you. I'm praying God changes your heart. I'm praying you restore what you've stolen, killed, and destroyed. Make things right. You're the right man for her. Only you can do this. God knows my heart. It was — for a moment — full of contempt for you. It was jealous. It wanted the one you had. It wanted her to love me as she loves you. In short, it wanted the impossible. I was wrong. I know that now, and I feel beyond punished for my mistake. I have sinned against you. I have sinned against your wife and children. I have sinned against God. My heart wanted your wife. My heart wanted to steal back what you stole from me many years ago. It sought to set something right that was never wrong. My stupid hands have fumbled with these pie...

Some Ukrainian girl. I'm a cliche. I'm the American man who got divorced from his American wife and the thought of international dating has crept into the dim corners of my mind. I'm not into Asian girls. I can see the appeal. It's just not for me. I am thinking more about Russian and Ukrainian girls. Maybe Belarusian. Maybe Moldovian.  There are a lot of reasons why this makes sense to me. Slavic girls come from a traditional patriarchal culture. While such things are under fire in this country, I can see the value of being with a woman with traditional values. First of all, they won't fuck around on you. They value and protect their families at all costs. Cheating, then, would not be protecting their families. That's not to say they're only homemakers. They actually chafe at the thought of not being able to support their family financially. So, after the children are able to attend school, they most likely will seek employment if they haven't a...

Some people seem effortless, the way they get through life, but life is hard for a lot of people. I know a way to make it easier.  I once worked with a girl (let's call her Shelby) who would talk disparagingly of another girl we worked with (who we'll call Shayna). Shayna was a little slow. She went to an alternative school. I got the feeling there was some sort of abuse or at least neglect (which is the same as abuse, really) at home. She loved her boyfriend. She smoked pot sometimes. This was a girl who should definitely not smoke pot, as she didn't have enough brain cells to go around as it was. She told awful, not-funny stories and would laugh like they were funny. Shelby said Shayna was a "herp derp" or just "herp." Sometimes just "derp," "derpy," or some derivative of the same nonsense. Yeah, she wasn't very nice to Shayna.  Shayna loved Shelby. No, not that kind of love. But, she certainly followed her around a bit ...

Confession time. My life is a mess. I really should be suicidal, but I'm not. I think it's pure fear keeping me alive right now. It's a beautiful day, but I feel wrecked once again.  Last night I woke after midnight and couldn't go back to sleep, got up, read one of my textbooks, and then got on the internet and decided that was a bad idea. The waking in the night, every single night, has to stop. I want to pull my hair out, but then I'd look like even more of a freak.  I've fallen off a cliff of epic proportions. Maybe I was unaware the whole time my life was crap, and I'm just now realizing it.  Most people have stuff figured out by the time they're 40. I'll be 41 soon, and I have exactly zero figured out, except I'm a mess. The things I formerly took pride in are no longer there. I've severed ties with people and the past so severely I no longer have ties to anyone or anything. I live alone. I have no friends. I talk to God alm...