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one day, john didn’t call. he didn’t call the next day, either. he didn’t return my calls or texts. we normally spoke every day. by the third day, i was getting worried. what had happened? was he in the hospital? or arrested? i wanted to call the police. then i remembered that he had given me his myspace password.

i go to my computer and log in. i simply intended to email some of his friends to see if they had any clue as to where he was. what i found was a new email from a girl. i went into the sent messages to see what he had sent her. he had said how he had broken up with me because of all the fighting (what fighting???) and that he’d always liked her and if she liked him as much as he likes her would she want to go out with him?

all news to me. we used to laugh at how maybe we should fake a fight just so we looked like other couples.

i sent him an email with his email copied and pasted into it asking when he was going to tell me we had broken up. i never heard from him again.

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so we head to the beauty supply store. we find the bleach pretty easily and move on to find the dye. i pick up a tube called “violet” and show it to her. marie says she thinks she wants the “cranberry”. i tell her that cranberry isn’t purple at all. unfortunately, the tube was clear so you could see the dye. the cranberry looked purple to the eye. i tried to explain that it doesn’t necessarily mean that it was purple. just like paint dries a different color than it looks wet, i figured hair dye was the same way. i couldn’t see why they’d name the color cranberry if it was purple. violet, however, is practically the same as purple.

naturally, i’m the dumb man who doesn’t understand hair. she grabs the cranberry.

short story long, marie bleaches and then dyes her hair. when the towel came off, her hair was pink. PINK!

to make matters more interesting, we had made plans to go to a steakhouse (with a down under theme) that night. despite looking ridiculous, she decides she wants to go anyway. needless to say, we were stared at the whole evening.  months later, i see a commercial for said steakhouse that was strikingly similar to this story. i think they owe me a free steak or something.

so, one day (actually many days, but i’m referring to one in particular), she was upset about something.

“what’s wrong, honey?”

“nothing”

“nothing?’

“nothing”

“you seem upset’

“i’m not upset”

“you seem bothered”

“i’m not bothered”

“you just seem like something’s eating at you”

“nothing’s wrong”

“okay, but it just seems like something in your little world isn’t as perfect as you would like it right now”

she was like this for three or four days. finally, she starts SCREAMING at me for not caring about her. how could i not notice what was going on with her? i told her i had been trying for all this time to tell me what was upsetting her. classic marie: “nothing’s upsetting me. i’m not upset, i’m irked” “so when i’ve been asking you what’s bothering you and you’ve been telling me nothing, if i had asked if anything was irking you, you’d have told me?” “yes”

excuse me! next time i’ll have my thesaurus handy.

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that’s when i look up at the TV.  the one i bought him for his birthday.  there’s a video in, and it’s on pause.  if you remember the old video cassettes, you know the pause wasn’t really that clear like it is today.  squinting and tilting my head a little, i realize there’s a woman giving a guy a blow job on the screen!

i’m not against porn.  i don’t really get into it, but i’m not against it.  just be upfront about it, right?  i only think that’s fair.

i sat there, looking at the fuzzy picture for a while before i go looking for john.  boy, will he be glad to see me!  i finally found him, in the basement, switching a load of laundry over.  he froze when he saw me, and turned white, which is quite a feat considering his african coloring.  he finally closed his open jaw, asked me if i could finish the laundry while he went to the bathroom, and bolted up the stairs past me.

it took a while, but the whole sordid details finally came out.  he had quite a collection going by now.  my question was where he got them all.  he had rented a p.o. box behind my back and had had them delivered there.

to this day, i am confused as to how bad that video had to have been in order for him to stop watching it and go switch his laundry over.  must’ve been some laundry.

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i was 5 months pregnant when i met his wife!!!! he was on temporary assignment to washington, so his wife and two kids stayed in texas. i never had a clue. she flew in to surprise him for their anniversary. i stopped by his house to visit. she answered the door….there we stood…both pregnant! she invited me in, he saw me and took off running down the street in nothing but his boxers in 25 degree weather.

she asked me, “would you like some grape juice?”

“yes, i would!”

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i worked outside in the sun and heat.  i walked a lot but made good money for it.  i figured that if i’m working outside of the home so marie doesn’t have to, the least she could do was put down the game controller (mario 64 if you care) and wash a dish or two.  in my dreams.  what actually happened was we ended up with a path through the living room to get from the bedrooms to the kitchen.

i got fed up with it.  in five minutes, i had cleaned up a huge area of the floor, filling up three 55-gallon trash bags.  i made marie an offer.  i offered her a dollar a minute she cleaned the apartment.  i suggested fifteen minutes a day would be enough to clean the place in a week or two.

her response?  me wanting her to do anything was controlling.  in the following argument, i learned that it wasn’t that it was degrading asking her to clean.  it was controlling asking her to do anything she wasn’t inclined to do on her own.  despite the fact that she would get paid more than i did to do it, i was trying to control her.  i wish.

if i controlled her, the place would be clean, and the princess would still be stuck up in that damn tower.

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fast forward to the next day when i hear him talking to his mother on the phone. he’s telling her how she’s going to love the cruise he just bought for the four of us. FOUR?!?!?! did i just hear that right? surely he meant two.

nope. four. me, him, his mom, and his mom’s wife. yeah. and to top it all off, we were sharing a cabin. thanks, john, i think i’d rather go camping.

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not really. come christmas morning, when it comes my turn to open presents, i find two gifts for me under the tree. one was cologne that smelled like straight rubbing alcohol, and the other was one of those big-button calculators made for little old ladies who can’t see shit.

me: “what about all those bags?”

marie: “oh, those were for me, wanna see what i got?”

tons and tons of pretty nice stuff. all for her. she bought my stuff at dollar general. guess i was worth about $6 of my money to her.