Usually, I like to make the ha-has. Or at least the rueful smirk. Or at the very least the eyeroll and the click away to another site.
But this whole Silda Spitzer thing, which seems to be garnering as much attention as the whole prostitute thing, has gotten me thinking. And by "Silda Spitzer thing," I mean her decision to go to the press conferences and stay with her husband and not imbed the heel of a shoe into that crazy fuck of a husband's face. And what a face it is. Scrunched up, gleaming with pleasure at his own cleverness, bobbing on that lanky body like the dot on an upside-down exclamation point. He looks harmless, law-abiding, do gooder-ish. No one that looks like Don Knotts zipped inside a Paul Scheer suit could possibly be so, well, gross.
And maybe it is his look that reminds me most of my own cheating-boyfriend-past. Mine was also tall and lanky. He was baby-faced and kind-looking. His face was scrunched, although handsomer because he was, after all, an aspiring actor.
And I was shocked to find out that he had slept around on me -- not because our relationship was good. It was broken from the start, we split up every three or four weeks. I had the feeling he was embarrassed to have me meet his friends, and then that feeling was replaced by the creepier notion that perhaps he essentially had no friends.
And the brokenness was also my fault. I was young. I had low self-esteem. In the reverse of Alvy Singer, I wanted to belong to ANY club that would take me as a member. I instructed my partners in the ways they could be cruel to me. "You don't really like me but you want to sleep with me? Okay! I am so cool with that."
The only thing surprising about the fact that this guy cheated on me was that I was surprised by it. But whenever we hit a rocky patch, he would say something like, "I know we're having trouble, but I haven't even held hands with another girl since we started dating."
I took that at face value because, you know, why not?
And then, and here's the part where I finally get to the point, after finding out about the cheating with numerous girls, including friend-ish types, I stayed with him. For three months. And here's as close as I can get to an explanation. I think I wanted to stick around to see him sweat, to see him grovel, to see him squirm. I thought the cheating was a reflection of me, and I wanted that image to go away. I wanted it to be replaced by something else. I wanted him to tell me what I was worth. I wanted him to say he made a terrible mistake. And he said it over and over. And you know what? That really did make me kinda feel better. Later in life, I would learn how to do that myself --but not yet. And I hadn't had that ah-hah moment where you realize guys like that are just guys like that.
The light started peeking through when I asked him, on another long night of harangues and tears, why he had really broken up with the girl before me. Having lately learned the art of confession, he said that he had cheated on her too.
And then I could see sweeping behind him a long chain of pretty and serviceable girls, each tossed aside for the next, each to him the same -- perfectly okay but not quite perfect. He was like a kid walking down a beach collecting shells. Selecting and abandoning them on a whim when his hands got too full.
We broke up for good one afternoon. I had told him I thought we oughta split. He begged me to reconsider. And I mean begged. I finally said fine, come over and we can talk about it.
I was met with a long silence and then, "Well, I can't right now. The Laker game is coming on."
Really, honestly, as far as break-up stories go, you have to admit that's a heck of a great exit line.
I hung up, and stopped taking his calls and emails. About a month later I was driving inland on the 10. I had started dating a guy who lived outside the city. My phone rang, and there was the ex, wanting to hash it all out again. I told him that I was on my way to an appointment and I had to go.
"I love you," he said hopefully. And I could have said a bunch of stuff about how false that was, but instead I grinned and just said what he wanted to hear.
Oh sure, uh huh, "I love you too," I said.
And then, from him, "I think, you know, in a couple of years it will work out between us."
I can't remember what I said, just something to pacify him. And then I hung up and kept on going.
I didn't give it much thought after that. I was already on my way to somewhere else.
