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.
I want to remind all my avid readers (all 5 of you) to please, please, please make sure to check your electronics/appliances before leaving the store. I purchased a Cool/Warm Mist Ultrasonic Humidifier from Bed Bath & Beyond in San Diego. I didn't look inside - even after I got home - and kept it in the trunk of my car and made the move with it. When I finally opened the packaged, it had been used with these hard water stains crusted all over it and the instruction booklet was ripped in half! Really... who does that? Anyway, we went the Bed Bath & Beyond nearest to where I'm staying but they didn't have it in stock, so then we drove about 15 miles out of the way to get a brand new one. Was it worth it? I'm not sure yet, I'll make sure to report on the benefits of a humidifier once I have some empirical data.
I tried to stall dropping Will off at the airport for as long as I could, but making him miss his flight really wouldn't have helped out any in the long run. Afterwards, I went to the nearby Vons and bought some snacks and light groceries. I also bought this little guy - it's a succulent called a Panda Plant! It's cute and small and fuzzy... since I don't have either of my little furry babies around to keep me company, I decided to buy a fuzzy plant because petting it provides a more rewarding experience than just regular leaves.
Then I unpacked most of my clothes and did enough ironing to last me a lifetime but my shirts will all be wrinkle-free! At some point in my organizing/ironing... I realized that my Temper-Pedic pillow was missing!!! Those of you who have ever traveled with me or witnessed me travel know that I cannot spend a single night without my pillow. My chiropractor recommended it for me 5 years ago and we have never parted since. I get aches and pains in my neck, shoulders, and back due to my scoliosis and the pillow is one of the things that help me upkeep my infrastructure.
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