Love #2

I had gone a little crazy in the interim between break up and meeting this guy. Partying a lot, staying single, messing around with a number of guys. Basically doing what I should have been doing while in college from the ages of 17 to 20, instead of being in a fucked up abusive relationship with a sociopath. It was great fun, but I'd always believed in love and definitely hadn't given up on it.

He was another older man, even more so than the first. I was almost 21 and he was 33. He was also my manager at a new restaurant, starting a trend of dating people I worked with that would continue for more than ten years. He tried very hard not to like me, but there was something between us that I had never experienced, and don't know if I will again. It was like we just knew, the first time we met, that we were meant only for eachother. I couldn't help the flirting and suggestion, but I also didn't want to get in trouble or have him get in trouble. It was some kind of fate (or maybe just the pure insanity of the owner) that made that restaurant go down in flames one night. Not literal flames, but basically after a crazy tantrum from the owner, resulting in things like knives being thrown at the chef, more than half the staff quit. (The restaurant never recovered and closed less than two years later.) At the same time, and before anything physical happened between us, his girlfriend moved out. That was fine with me, and with him, and we promptly tumbled into bed together and practically never left his house except to work and buy food for nearly two months.

It was such an amazing connection between us. It was like I was sitting in a room with myself when I was with him. He would be writing at his desk, and I'd be reading for one of my classes, with some classical music on (I can't listen to Wagner to this day) and a couple of glasses of wine and it was just peaceful. He would be able to feel me looking at him and look at me with such love in his eyes. I could feel where he was if he was within a mile radius of me, no matter what was going on. We talked for hours, of course, about all the plans we had for our lives and what we would do together and separately. He loved me for just being me, and nothing else, and it was just beautiful. I loved him like...god, I don't even know how to say how I loved him. So unlike any relationship I had ever had with any other person in my life.

He had never been married, but did have a son from a previous relationship. His son hadn't liked any of the other women his dad had dated, but fell in love with me immediately. It was just perfect, and there was never any question that we would stay together forever. My dad found out about it and freaked out, because my dad is an idiot. A bigoted idiot, I should say. This man was half black, half white, and that was just not acceptable at all. Even though he was educated, even though his mom was a famous writer and well off financially, even though I was happier and more loved and more respected than I'd ever been, my father didn't like him cause his skin was darker than mine. Ass. I have father issues, can you tell?

I was coming "home" (to his house) after school one day, and the minute I stepped out of my car at the bottom of the stairs, I knew something was wrong. I could feel it in the air. I walked so slowly up the steps, instead of my usual run up, cause I knew something bad was going to happen. When I walked in, I saw him sitting on the couch, looking towards the door, waiting for me. Our eyes locked, and my fake smile faltered, and I asked him in a ridiculously fake nonchalant voice "What's up?" He just looked at me, and then said "I'm sorry." Me, still with the fake voice "Why are you sorry?" And then it came. "Kristen called me. She's pregnant. Three months pregnant, in fact, and she's going to keep it." Silence from my mouth on the outside, but absolute screaming inside my head. Just one word, "NOOOOO!" I just looked at him, with hope quickly dying in my eyes, knowing that if he meant to stay with me, he wouldn't have that sad, sad look in his eyes. I was finally able to speak, and even though I knew the answer, I asked anyway. "What are you going to do?" He started to cry, and said "I have to go back with her. I can't have another child with a woman who I'm not with, without even trying. I just can't do it. I have to try and see if it can work between us, for the sake of my child. And myself."

He got along well with the mother of his son, but it broke his heart to not be able to be with the boy more. He hated not living with him everyday, and hated the stupid fights about who was going to have him when. Him needing to try with Kristen just proved that he wasn't all talk, and proved that he was as good a man as I thought he was. Fat lotta good that did my destroyed heart, though.

We had had plans to go to the Symphony in San Francisco for my birthday, which was a week away, but obviously that didn't happen. My dad knew I was heartbroken, and he wasn't going to be in town for my birthday (very important fishing trip he had planned, over my birthday weekend. See, daddy issues!!) , so he got me a ticket and hotel room in Las Vegas, where my cousin and some friends were going to be for some convention. I turned 21 in Las Vegas, less than a week after being completely heartbroken, and I was not in a healthy state of mind. I was crazy with grief and sadness. I drank way too much over the next few months, and did some very bad things. I called him some, but it was almost too painful to hear his voice, so I had to stop. I started calling his best friend instead, and going out and getting drunk with him and his brother which was, in my warped mind, a way to stay connected to my man. I ended up trying to sleep with his best friend and it was horrible. I started crying halfway undressed, and completely lost it right in the middle of his friends bed, and thank god not able to finish what I so stupidly started. The whole thing was sordid and horrible, and I'm damn lucky I didn't kill myself driving drunk every night.

A month later, I got a job at the same restaurant he was working in. He worked nights, and I mostly worked days, but I was able to see him a little bit. It was pathetic, but I just needed to see him so badly and be in the same room with him sometimes that I had to take that job. He started calling me again, and we'd just end up crying and being pathetic, and he just had to tell me how miserable he was with her and without me. That did not help my healing any, I'll tell ya. Then, of course, we had to see eachother. But since I still lived with my dad, and he lived with her, we had to meet at some secret place and do it in his car. God, I can't believe how I could degrade myself like that, but I had it bad, and I just had to be with him. After basically having an affair with him, with stolen moments five or six times a week, for about two months, I heard in passing from someone at work that he was getting married. No one knew anything about us, so naturally I was able to ask them about it without it seeming weird, and they told me he was getting married next month in a quiet justice of the peace type ceremony, with no honeymoon to follow, probably for the insurance for her pregnancy. I had just been with him that morning, not even an hour before this conversation, and he had seemed distant a little but also really glad to see me (hot sex in a car and whispered endearments evidently make anyone happy, I've since learned). He hadn't said a word, and that was when I found my self-respect again. I didn't call him or see him outside of work again after that. When I saw him later that day at work, I just walked by him and whispered "Married, huh?", waited for the shock to hit his face, and then walked away.

He left the restaurant shortly after, and I didn't see him for quite a while. I got engaged a year and a half later, and saw him a few months after that. He had split up with her, though was not divorced, and came into our restaurant a little drunk. I was the only one with a car, so I gave him a ride home. It was really weird to be alone with him, knowing he wasn't with her, and the connection was still there in full force, but I was engaged and in love with my fiance. Thank god I didn't do anything, I couldn't handle having that on my shoulders. He did apologize a lot for what he did to me, and wished me the best in my marriage, and just looked at me like he used to. I got the hell out of there before I did anything really stupid (although, considering that I ended up divorced, the stupid thing was probably getting out of there. But I didn't know that at the time, and there's no way to really know what would have happened, is there?) and went home to my fiance feeling vindicated but still really really sad about us.

This was when I learned that life gets in the way of true love, and that even if you are heartbroken beyond any hope of recovering, you need to keep your self-respect just a little intact, and stick to the barest of morals you can muster. Otherwise, you become the dirty other woman, just waiting to get hurt over and over.

Love #1

My first love was an older man, a trend I've pretty much stuck with. I met him the beginning of my senior year (yes, high school is when it started, but it went until I was 20, so I'm counting it). I was 17 and he was 25. I realize now how yucky that is, but then it just seemed like the coolest thing ever. He was a surfer, with long blonde hair and a compact but powerful body. He had his own apartment, and he was way into me. He wasn't technically my first, but I had only had sex once, two years before and hated it, so it was a big deal when we did it for the first time. Once the initial pain was out of the way, it was wonderful. We were together a lot, almost everyday, and I fell hard for him. He did for me as well, and returned all the affection I gave him. Turned out that he couldn't get much work here (he was a carpet installer), but his parents, who lived in Oregon, said that they knew of many people he could work for. So, about two months before I graduated, he moved away. I was devastated. Truly, truly almost comatose with heartbreak. I decided that I was going to move up to be with him and that nothing was going to keep us apart.

My dad was not happy about this. My dad has always had one idea about what I would do with my life, and that was go to college and become some kind of businesswoman superpower. Never gonna happen, but whatever. He was pissed that I was going to throw it all away for a guy, and promptly went on the warpath. He cancelled my senior trip, and told me if I moved he wouldn't pay for college. I said fine. Then, he tried to get me to go to a college in Oregon, but still five hours away from where my boyfriend lived. I looked at the college, and actually had a great weekend there, but still just wanted to be with him. I never said I was smart about love.

So, through much parental anguish and stubborn teenager-with-a-mission bullshit, I succeeded in moving up there. My dad actually drove me there, and tried his hardest not to beat the crap out of my boyfriend. He also sold my car, and told me repeatedly what a mistake I was making and that he was never going to pay for my college. That of course just steeled my resolve to do whatever I had to do for love. I pretty much just sat on my ass for that summer, gaining weight and trying to figure out how to live on my own. We lived with his parents for a couple of months, until he and I were able to save up some money, and then we moved to the little town over from them into a cool old trailer on a lot of land. We bought some old clunker, and he fixed it up and it ran great. Things were good for a couple of months. But then, of course, he changed.

I got a job at Pizza Hut, and he was working off and on. We also had one of his friends living with us, who just happened to be a lazy piece of drug addicted shit, so that was fun too. Not. My dad gave me a TV for my 18th birthday, so with the leftover furniture from his parents garage, we had an interesting broke kids kind of house. We used to go play Mortal Combat at the little mini mart down the road, and drink a lot of boxed wine. But he started getting really weird. He wouldn't come home or be where he was supposed to be. Then, when he did come home, he'd be less than sober and start in on me. Calling me a slut, and a lot of other horrible names, and accusing me of sleeping with every male I'd ever laid eyes on. I didn't know what to think about all of it, because it was so foreign. No one had ever talked to me like that, and I of course wasn't doing anything but loving him and working hard to pay the bills. Now, of course, I know that he was doing that because he was cheating on me and needing to deflect suspicion by putting it all on me. The verbal abuse started to really wear me down, and I was depressed and sad a lot of the time. All I could hear when I was trying to smile at my customers were his horrible words ringing in my ears. Then (see this coming?) he started with the physical stuff. First just slamming doors in my face, then pushing past me, then pushing me, then throwing me up against walls and hitting me where no one would see the bruises. It was horrible, but at the same time it was like it wasn't happening to me. I felt like I was disconnected from my own life. One night, it was all lovey and wonderful and sweet, and the next it was coming home at 3 am drunk and screaming and hitting and choking and throwing me around.

This went on for almost two years, with varying degrees of violence and verbal abuse. I met people who would hang out with me for a while and figure out what was going on and try to help me get out. I just couldn't though. I don't know why. My dad renegged on the not paying for college thing, and I started to go to the local community college. I was very happy, and did really well with a full load and working full time. I had good grades, and felt like I was in my own life again. When I was at school and work, that is. At home, it was the same. I never knew what I would come home too, and I started to look like one of those dogs that has been beaten and yelled at a lot: Big, watchful eyes, slinking through the hallway, flinching if he moved a certain way or said something weird or had that look in his eye. I had a fairly good job at the time, but a new boss came on the scene who I did not get along with. One day, after a particularly horrible night of fighting with him and being up half the night trying not to get the shit beat out of me, she pulled some crap on me and I just snapped. I've never quit a job without a full two weeks notice, but that day I walked out in the middle of the busiest shift of the week. Then about a week later, I literally woke up in the morning and said "that's it, I'm done." I called my dad that morning and told him I needed to come home right now. He was there in two days, and he took me home.

This is when I learned that love could hurt like nothing else, and that I needed to be careful of who I gave my love to. And I also learned that some men can be absolute and total asshats.

Love is on my mind

It's pathetic, really, but there it is. I haven't been obviously, outgoingly, unabashedly loved by a man in two and a half years, and I miss it. I miss knowing that there is someone out there who thinks I'm the hottest, funniest, sexiest, smartest, coolest woman on the planet. I miss having someone to talk to every night before I go to sleep. I miss having someone else's body at my disposal to do with as I please, whenever I please. I miss loving someone and buying them little things for no reason and leaving silly notes in their pants pockets for them to find randomly during the day. I miss having a best friend who gives me orgasms and makes me laugh and feel all warm and squishy inside.

I'm thinking about love, and the kinds of love I've been in in my life. So I'm going to chronicle them here. I'm going to keep this about men I've loved, because if I started about the love I have for my son or my friends or my family, I'd go on forever. I think I want to just go through and tell the stories of the loves I've had one by one, just to get them out of my head and on "paper" so that I can look at them a little more objectively. I'm also not going to put down high school "loves" because, as dramatic as they were, they weren't anything more than hormone charged craziness with no actual impact on my life as an adult.

So, here goes. The Chronicles of J's Ridiculous Love Life.

August is Hell

Truly, truly hell. There is just no way to do anything but work, sleep, and hopefully eat with all the hellish hell that is August. A couple of my other favorite bloggers (I really wish I knew how to do the cool link under the name thing, but I don't. I know, I'm retarded) The Bouncer and The Waiter live in NY. They have said that August is a wasteland. No one is in the city. Others that I work with from Europe say that a lot of countries pretty much just shut down in August. Do you know where they go? To California, of course. More specifically, to my area of California. What with the luxury resorts and golf courses every-fucking-where, and the cool ocean air, who wouldn't come here? But still, jayzus it is crazy in August. I generally just accept the fact that I'm going to be tired and grouchy and my feet will hurt SO BAD for the four weeks of August, and also accept the fact that nothing else is going to get done at all. My house is a disaster of epic proportions, my son is wondering where his cool fun mom went, and I'm wondering if my feet will ever stop aching as we creep into September. Most of the truly hellish stuff is past, but September and October aren't exactly slow either. The only saving grace is that it is really good for the old bank account, so I guess I can't really complain that much.

In other news, the boy started his new school last week. A day at a beach in Big Sur, a hell of a drive, but what a way to have a first day of school. It would have been a perfect day if I hadn't crashed my car into the side of a mountain on the way home. It sounds worse than it was, and it could have been much much worse (two high school boys died a couple of weeks ago on the same road) but it still sucked. The insurance company will be picking up the tab to the tune of $4600, ouch, and hopefully I will get my car back soon. In the meantime I'm driving a piece of shit Hyundai that I hate, but that is much better than the boy or I being dead or in the hospital, so, again, can't really complain (although clearly I am, wah!)

Ah, the fiasco. Knew I'd get here eventually, didn't you? What to say about him and I. I think he still reads this, maybe, but maybe not. Who knows. It's all very interesting and confusing and fun. And hot. I just don't know what to say about it, partly because I don't want to show my hand if he's reading (not that that has stopped me in the past, I know) but also because I just don't know how to feel about all of it. The bare facts are he is being good. He is calling when he says he will, spending a lot more time with me than he has in the past, seeming to infuse things with feeling with more freedom than he has in the past. And kissing me in public, around all of our work friends, which was quite frankly SHOCKING to me. All of which is good you'd think, but I find it very hard, after all that we've been through, to trust him. No wonder really, you'd say, and you'd be right. He has not proven to be a trustworthy type of person, and since I've generally gotten rid of untrustworthy people in the past, I don't know how long someone has to prove they are worthy of the trust before you can trust them again. I pay a lot more attention to his actions now that I know his sly ways, but it's still pretty hard. For instance, the other morning while in bed, he got a call. He had to have seen that it was his work number on his cell when it rang, but after he said hello and the other person said hello, it was a woman's voice and he moved as though he was going to jump up out of bed. Like he needed to get to another room to talk to someone he didn't want me to know he was talking to. Then he realized the voice was a woman from work, and he relaxed back down. Those kind of things used to happen a lot when we were together before, and I just didn't clue into them, but now there is this ultra radar I have for stuff like that, and it's interesting what I see now. I do have to say that I don't see it very much now though, which is good for my sanity. On the other hand, he came into work with his ex-girlfriend, and everyone thought I was going to go postal and like, kill him right there or something. It was ridiculous how everyone was acting, but aside from being nervous about meeting her because of my own insecurities (you know, meeting the ex and finding out she's like a supermodel or something, not good) it didn't bother me at all. I was there on my normal night off, but he knew I was going to be there, so it's not like he was trying to slip her in while I wasn't there. Everyone gave him rations of shit for it, like they were fucking on the table with me watching or something, which annoyed the hell out of him. Her boyfriend works with me, and she and the fiasco are good friends still. Could they be sleeping together? Sure they could. How do I feel about that? No freaking idea, honestly. [I have an unconventional attitude about relationships: I truly do not care where you stick whatever you have, so long as you are honest with me (men DO NOT understand that as a whole, they are just programmed to lie about stuff like that). I don't know if I could sleep with only one person for the rest of my life, so I don't expect that with guys I'm with, but not a one of them has been able to be honest about it to me when they've been with others. It's really stupid, I'm basically telling them they can sleep with whomever they want so long as I know, and they still lie about it. Retards.] I took a couple of their courses out to them, and while I didn't stay and chit chat, it was nice to finally meet her. She seems nice, but it is strange that we look a little similar and she has the same name as me. Coincidence? Probably not, but who really wants to jump into that pool of possible craziness? Not me. It is an interesting little circle of incestuousness we have working right now though. I'm sleeping with him, everyone else thinks he's sleeping with his ex, I work with her boyfriend, and she's probably going to come work with us soon too. Yay! Small town with an even smaller hospitality community leads to some really interesting connections. I also had a very interesting and pretty damn dirty sex dream about her boyfriend last night. Another crazy pool I do not want to jump into. Jeez.

There is just nothing to say about work, because I do not have the energy. I should really just change the name of this blog to J's crazy fucked up life and get over the idea that this was ever going to be a waiting tables blog. And that, my friends, is one long assed post encompassing all of August. I bid you adieu, for now.