Delusional B*tch

Here is another delightful little short story that I wrote about another unforgettable character I had encountered in my young adult life.  Another chapter in the life I lived in the place that I will soon be leaving behind...

DELUSIONAL B*TCH

            Kristen always complained about her boyfriend.  They met in a pastry shop, very apropos, him being French and all.  It wasn’t long before he was rechristened Le Douche by a tribunal of her closest friends – not to her face, of course.  We're critical, not crass.     

Anyway, he never wanted her around when his friends were over.  He wasn’t supportive of her career goals.  He never liked her cat and wouldn’t agree to feed him when she had an out-of-town emergency.  She shelled out four hundred dollars to ship the little fellow up to her parents for temporary accommodations.   It was a one-way ticket. 

Through all of that, she held a dogged determination to make their relationship work.

She frequently initiated couple-negotiations - a delicate foxtrot of tit for tat.  Sometimes it works out for the better and the relationship will coast along until new problems arise or the old ones rear their ugly heads.

In Kristen’s case, it just started looking like a sad doe-see-doe with a three-legged donkey.  She took a step forward, he took one back.  She gave a little and he gave littler.  She suggested solutions and strategies, and he refused to compromise.

To everyone else, it was plainly obvious that she was basically just gimping around in a circle with a teetering jackass.  To her, it was progress.

            After the completion of a particularly demanding round of couple-negotiation, their concessions thus stood:  He promised to be more involved with her life if she gave up the three D’s - drinking, dancing and dressing up.

More involved with her life… what does that even mean??  And was that really a fair trade?  As we well know, there is something sacred about a group of girls getting gussied up and going out on a Friday night.  It is a holy bonding ritual known as Girls’ Night Out.  It has been around for as long as the sexes themselves have.  That tangible urge to walk out the door smelling good and looking hot, leaving your man’s dumbassery behind for one night.  It is a deeply rooted natural impulse.

It’s like that documentary, “March of the Penguins.”  Every year those penguin mamas roll their precious little egg to the dad penguins, give a belly bump and go, See ya, bitches! as they leave the males huddling in the dark for four months. 

Well, giving up those three D’s still left many recreational opportunities open to her such as… office parties.  Those are minimal in the fun department but only require 1.5 out of 3 D’s: you drink enough to survive and kind of dress up in a conservative fashion.  Unfortunately, Girls Night Out absolutely necessitates all three components.  So, she gave it up cold turkey.  Just like that.  

That is the serious face of  a girl who is dedicated to her relationship.  I applaud her ascetic attitude.  It takes a blinding level of commitment to embrace that much bullsh*it.  However, let the record reflect that she still couldn’t be around when his friends came over.  She complacently put her school applications on the back burner.  Oh, and she still didn’t have her cat.

I couldn’t tell you for sure but I think feminist penguins everywhere spit on ice-chiseled effigies of her that day. 

So the days droned on and things must have settled down because I didn’t really hear much about their problems anymore.  In fact, nobody really heard anything from her anymore.  It’s like she just fell off the face off the Earth.  Then, crap hit the always prevalent proverbial fan.

One day, Kristen got a phone call from Douche’s wife.  Go ahead, read that sentence again.  Uhhhhhh-huh.  After some initial clarification that they were in fact speaking about the same man and who was voulez-vouz coucher-ing whom; it was all sorted out.  While Monsieur Double Douche here had been dating Kristen for three and half years, he had been married to Madame Douche for four. 

When someone breaks news like that to you, it’s like being sucker punched in the gut right below the diaphragm.  It leaves you gasping and reeling for breath.  I was developing pictures at a CVS pharmacy (yeah, that’s how I roll) when she called to share her misery.  I didn’t know what to say.  This was uncharted territory, even for me, and I wasn’t sure how to tread the waters.  

Sure, everyone knew he was a jackass and we even expected something like this, maybe in less monumental proportions, to happen sooner or later.  But you just can’t say that to a girl friend who was freshly wounded, no matter how obvious it was or how much you wanted to throw some salt on it as payback for the months of being ditched for that loser.

So, I went along with it.  What?!  OMG!! Are you sure?  Shut up!  I never saw this coming in a MILLION years!!! AHHH!!  I’m so sorry. *audible pout*

Naturally, she confronted Le Douche.  Apparently, she was just some woman he met at the farmer’s market when he first arrived in America.  She knew he needed a green card to stay and work in this country so she offered to engage in a sham marriage in return for some money every month.  He had been paying her every month for four years and that was the extent of their relationship.  In the past few weeks, she had found out about his romantic relationship with Kristen and must have become scared she would lose an easy income, so, decided to start some drama to make Kristen leave.

           What a heaping pile of crap!  You know it and I know it but Kristen ate it all up.  He was just an unfortunate soul caught up in a faulty system, trying to chase the elusive American Dream.  She even offered to marry him - on paper only, of course - because she’s not trying to take advantage of the situation and press him into a relationship commitment that he wasn’t ready to make.  He cried and exclaimed that he couldn’t believe his unbelievable fortune to have such a loving and understanding girlfriend.
           I could not decipher what I was witnessing.  It was mind-numbingly bizarre how happy this turn of events made her.  It was like having a front row seat at the Stockholm Syndrome matinee.  Of course, her friends began chiseling away at the obvious plot holes of this sad show.  Like, if Mrs. Douche was indeed just a financially driven entity, why did she keep on leaving Kristen voicemails and text messages that called her a prostitute in a multitude of phrases and languages?  She pleasantly explained our skepticism away and told us we just didn’t get it.
           The matinee was followed by an encore prime time performance when Kristen’s car was keyed while it was parked in his driveway.  Not only that, but the wife was actually screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs.  Monsieur Douche rushed out to deal with the spectacle.  Meanwhile, an astounded Kristen peaked out through the curtains, not knowing what to do and too shocked and scared to do anything but stare with her mouth open.
           When it was all over, Kristen demanded answers.  Even she could recognize the telltale signs of a bona fide jilted lover.  At that point, he divulged the untold chapters of his epic journey.  Everything he had told her about their sham marriage was "true."  He just left out the part that they had finally consummated the marriage just six months prior.
           So, there you have it.  Not only was he a sham-married man when he met Kristen.  But according to his latest news flash, he actually dated her for three years before cheating on her with his sham-wife.  Now, that's a lot to digest.
           She left his house that day, reeling with emotions.  She was hurt beyond all else and cried to everyone who would commiserate with her.  She spent a good solid few days without any communications with him.  She didn’t answer his calls.  She refused to read his texts.  She hung out with a circle of close friends who gave her the strength and emotional support she really needed.
           Days turned into a whole week.  Followed by days that had almost turned into another whole week when she broke the news.
           Yes, they were back together.
           Sometime during the unsupervised hours of alone time she had at home, he managed to reach through and rub her weak spot.  He had spent the past dozen of lonely nights marinating in remorse and sorting through his life.  He realized the folly of his ways and was ready to be a real man.  He wanted Kristen.  He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.  And he wanted to have babies with her.  To prove his sincerity, he signed some packet of divorce papers in front of her.  He told her how relieved he felt to no longer live a double life and once everything was settled legally, their life can finally commence.  Everything she had ever wanted from their relationship was laid out before her, ready for the taking should she choose to accept.  He knew just what to do with her weak spot and her brittle psyche went into a literal mind-gasm.
           Kristen basked in the glowing climax of her relationship.  And like other climaxes, it’s hard to think clearly when your system is running rampant with all those crazy chemicals and feelings.  They re-entered couple-negotiation and this time it was a huge success.  He encouraged her to pursue the education that she wanted, even if it meant she would have to go to another state.  He wanted her to move in with him.  She could bring her cat too.
           Wow, things were on the up and up!
           Ok, the sane women of this planet can see right through the bullsh*t.  A Delusional B*tch, unfortunately, cannot.  She looks at the world through opaque lenses of happy daisies painted on by the Douches of the world.  And she loves it!
           She would never take off those rose-colored goggles.  Are you kidding?  She has everything she ever wanted, ever dreamt of, in the relationship she had single handedly fought so hard for.  She paid her dues.  She EARNED those blinders.
           Empowered by her newfound sense of adequacy, she packed up all her stuff and moved in with him that weekend.  She fabricated a story about her landlord needing to end the lease early because he wanted to remodel the unit.  He never expected that she could have possibly moved in so quickly, but made it clear that he was very, very pleasantly surprised.  She had her keyed car painted a different color, and paid for the paint job with the fictitious deposit that her landlord had returned to her.  She no longer needed to disappear when his friends came over, yay.
           The funny thing was… nobody came over.  Ever.
           Girls’ Night Out remained absent from the menu, not that she was interested in such things anymore now that she was a domesticated woman, and she quickly fell off the face of the Earth – again.
           The last anyone had heard, she left briefly for some graduate program in Alaska.  He was overjoyed for her, which led her to quickly change her mind and she dropped it and moved back.  

Plans for bringing back kitty never coagulated… we’ll just have to write him off as unfortunate collateral damage.  He still goes to the sham-wife’s apartment to pay her and work towards a divorce that wouldn’t raise the eyebrows of Immigration and Naturalization Services.  

How does he pay her and in what way is he doing this supposed paying?  We’ll never know.

Kristen is still patiently waiting for him to propose to her and start having those babies that were promised to her.  It has been six years.

THE END

P.S. - That wasn't quite the end.  The anonymous and declared-to-be fictitious heroine of this particular story recently announced their engagement.  After dedicating herself to the relationship against all reason and sensibility for nearly a decade, it seems happiness shall be in their horizon.  It is my deepest hope to avoid being subjected to witness any more ridiculous events unfold and that, if any should occur within the periphery of my awareness, they will have the decency to keep it quietly to themselves.