Unlike some women you’ve met in the past, I won’t be propositioning you.
That was the last sentence in the first email I received from her, almost seven years ago. She was telling the truth. I was the one who propositioned her.
If you ever do turn your life around and realize that I am what you want, feel free to let me know. I will love you until my dying breath.
That was the last sentence in the last email I received from her, some four and a half years later. I think she was lying, even if she didn’t know it at the time. I hope she was, anyway.
It was a relationship that we kept secret — from friends, from relatives, from almost everyone. At the beginning, there were reasons for our discretion. She was well-respected in her church, her community, her profession. I was married. She was, without being too specific, in the law enforcement business. I was a bad guy in at least three senses of the word. She was a devout evangelical Christian. I was something between an atheist and a Jesuit. It was not meant to be.
Yet it was. We had ecstatic nights together, long trips, clandestine meetings everywhere from a casino in Atlantic City to the top-floor office at Mid-Ohio. We bent schedules and moved appointments and created dead space so we could touch. As John Updike once wrote of the adulterers in Couples, we became athletes of the clock. I don’t know how it looked to other people. I doubt we were as careful, as quiet, as smart as we thought we were.
She wrote tens of thousands of words to and for me, often by hand, in her rounded, undisciplined script. She had an artist’s touch with a fountain pen and I could recognize her handwriting at a distance, the deep curves and finishing flourishes absolutely consistent with her taste for vintage clothing that rarely hesitated at the border between style and costume.
I threw her notes and letters away, at first, when our passion was at its most intense and I daydreamed a future in which I woke up every morning next to her stellar body and big childlike eyes. Then, when I betrayed her again and again before moving another woman into my house and thus forcing her into the unpleasant, confining role of “side girl”, I began to cherish the things she wrote to me. I scattered them around the house, in hardcover books and guitar cases and Porsche gloveboxes. I didn’t read what they said. I knew what they said: stay with me, choose me, I love you. I didn’t want to be reminded of that. But neither could I let them go.
Never was I faithful to her, never did I choose her above all others as she asked. I told myself I was protecting her, that the minute we publicly dated her career would stumble to a halt. The truth was that I was protecting myself at her expense. As far as I know, she remained faithful to me the whole time we were together. Occasionally she would conceive a crush on a co-worker or fellow churchgoer. I would berate and torment her about it, telling her that I was abandoning her to that person and that she was worthless to me. Then, when she had apologized a thousand times for having done nothing, I would favor her with whatever attention I could spare.
She held fast against the storm and lull of my temper, the wax and wane of my passion. She listened to me pouring my heart out over other women, pretended not to know what I’d been up to. Sent me thoughtful, unique gifts that I stashed in drawers and closets. Bought matching T-shirts for me and John. At one point, she sent me a check to cover the cost of a car that I’d just bought. “It can be our car,” she wrote, in that voluptuous cursive of hers, “and some day we’ll drive it together.” I tore up the check and used the car to take another woman to dinner. There, at least, I could draw the line. I could draw it at my pride. What a fucking accomplishment.
A few years ago, she told me that she had bought a fountain pen from Kaweco. “It’s the pen of our people,” she laughed. Kaweco was German, as was she. As was I. The pen of our people. I bought the same one, a polished Kaweco AL Sport. It was angular, difficult in the hand. Not perfectly lovely, the same way she was not perfectly beautiful, but constructed in a manner that was beyond reproach, as she was. I traveled with my Kaweco, used it to write sharp notes to clients and co-workers. Once, when I was about to sign a birthday card for another woman, I found myself unable to form the letters with it. I had to put it down and find a cheap ballpoint. Somehow I could cheat on this woman without guilt or remorse or shame but I couldn’t write the word “Love” with that pen unless it was to her.
The Kaweco was in the center console of my Town Car in January of 2014. It came home to me a month later, in a plastic bag full of odds and ends that a friend of mine had rescued from the wreck. It was corroded shut from thirty days’ worth of exposure to the winter. I used brake cleaner to get it to twist apart, at which point the seals shattered and it bled blue on my hands. A few months later, when I could walk, I drove the three hundred miles to that woman’s house and picked up everything of mine that she had possessed. Those things, as well, were in a bag, cold to the touch.
Last month, Massdrop sent me a notification that they were doing a release of the Kaweco Liliput Fireblue. Each one is made from raw steel then tempered with a unique finish. Looking at the photographs of the little pen, I felt an odd kinship. What am I if not tempered by a hundred fires, burned permanently blue by my own mistakes and misfortunes? And what did I do to that woman? What parts of her heart are scorched? Shortly before I picked up my things from her, she wrote:
… I don’t know where I will go or what I will do, but I have to start over completely. I have to remove everything from my life that reminds me of you and what I have lost. It is my only chance of survival. I wish I could burn you from my memory.
And if she could, what color, what remnant would there be of that tempering process?
Today I cracked open the box that held my new Kaweco Fireblue and I prepared to write with it. The pen of our people. The fine stainless-steel tip, rhodium-plated and blah blah blah for durability and exclusivity and so on and so forth. Hovered over the page. It was time to write something. Nothing came. My hand seemed frozen. I leaned back. Took a breath. Bent again over the blank paper. I settled for my own name. She’d written it a thousand times. It seemed like the only thing I could write. The only thing I had confidence in. And in that moment, I realized that I had loved her more than I knew. But I also realized that in the end, we only had one thing in common: we were both thoroughly, deeply interested in what was most convenient, most wonderful, and best for me.
Welcome back Jack. I’ve missed this side of you.
Didn’t you just get married? What’s all that about then?
Yes I did. So obviously this is someone different 🙂
I’m guessing Vodka?
This woman was as far from Vodka as you can imagine… had I not moved Vodka in, it would have been her living with me.
Without a doubt the best thing you have ever written. You relationship articles are without a doubt the most interesting thing you do. Its so rare to see emotional honesty in writers there are about one other writer who is as honest with their readers.
I do like fountain pens even the cheapest disposable ones have such a nice feel. wrote all my notes in university on progressively more expensive ones. Parker Sonnets are the ones I really like.
Clandestine relationships end that way, I think, the majority of the time. I’ve actually been on both sides of that equation - *with the same person in-between* - Knowing simultaneously that I would be hurt, and doing the hurting.
I’m glad in the end you realized what had really been going on. I’ll bet, like me, you knew it all along, but chose to ignore it.
Such is the past. Enjoy your future.
Deep Jack .
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Love can be a b*tch sometimes .
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Cutting her loose doesn’t mean you didn’t love her , it was just the right thing to do .
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As always , eloquently written .
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-Nate
I am haunted by recurring dreams about the woman who loved me in that way. She was a beautiful, church-going “good girl” who wanted marriage, family, travel, and a life-long companion. I couldn’t imagine any of those things in my future, so I treated her the only way I knew how to treat somebody that I loved intensely, but who would never see full commitment out of me.
In the last one, just a few days ago, I saw her at some sort of shopping mall. I spoke briefly to her before she introduced me to her husband, who attempted to embrace me. I immediately pushed him away and said a few harsh words before looking down and noticing their daughter, the only one whose face I could see clearly. I smiled at her and walked away. I passed some sort of automated parking garage where my seventh-grade teacher had a vehicle on display before coming across the mall information kiosk and getting directions to the nearest liquor store, which seemed more like a car wash than a retail outlet.
I suppose this is progress. I used to have to chase her at some point in the dreams. I don’t actually know anything about her life. I can only assume she is still half a world away, married to someone I’ve never seen or met, and that she must have at least one child by now.
In my more rational moments, I know I did the right thing. She taught me who I really am. “There’s a victory in that.”
Thank you for writing and sharing this.
Great story. Only thing about gals (hell, guys too) who are content to be a P.O.T.S. (piece on the side) is that they are usually damaged goods. I’ve found that if you do make them your one and only squeeze, it doesn’t end well. You did good for finally setting her free.
As far as I know I’ve only been loved once and I’m not entirely sure that I want to know what my ex thinks of me. She once said that I broke her heart. I didn’t cheat on her but was less than honest with her in other ways, mostly financial.
Of my many shortcomings, this was my biggest failure. I’ll never have it as good as I did. When I first heard The Drive By Truckers southern Gothic lyrics some time after the divorce, I said to myself, “Faulkner’s her favorite writer, she’d like this.” Sometimes that colors my enjoyment of stuff. It took a long time for me to be able to listen to David Bromberg again, our first actual “date” was seeing him play at the original Ark coffeehouse in A2.
On the other hand, I got three children of substance and so far three grandkids out of the deal so I didn’t do that badly.
Yep ;
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Sometimes you get away clean/lucky .
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I sure did .
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Not sorry I married my ex Wife but mostly because she gave me my beloved Son then left me , no strings attached .
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Few are so lucky , especially the nitwits like me who married young .
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-Nate
Your relationship writing often has the gut-punch of the good ones that got away for good reasons. “Thank you for sharing” sounds trite but thanks anyhow.
I meant it sincerely. Let me try again:
I appreciate it when somebody takes that kind of time and effort to share something of that quality with my readers. Thank you.
Bug or feature?
Of the women that I treated carelessly, all lost their attraction once I softened.
A few months going to Mass won’t assuage the guilt, but a new woman sure gets it off your mind.
In the words of Sir Mix-A-Lot:
But ooh, things change when you don’t maintain
The same game you got her with, mayn…
I’m older and wiser now, fortunately.
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Need to get some sleep, got a full afternoon at an outdoor concert with number one son and two of his friends, with the four tickets my son snagged for free by being alert to the radio giveaways.
Brings back a memory of mine, when I was at the height of my “badboy” phase…early to mid-twenties, too much time and money on my hands, living in a high rise near a party school university, a cherry Mk II Jag and a candy apple apricot Norton cafe racer, and just full of my self and my youth.
Went downstairs a few flights to an apartment shared by four co-eds. One had her sister from about a hundred miles away visiting. The sister’s name was Terri, short for Theresa. The chemistry was immediate and mutual. We couldn’t wait for the opportunity to “go for a walk together” that same afternoon, indeed that same hour.
We were insatiable and unstoppable for days, then weeks.
Eventually the question of what the end-game would be came up. She would have lived in an igloo or on a deserted island with me, if I had asked her to.
But I feared the commitment. And I feared that I might be tied down to someone not intellectually challenging enough for me. And I feared another marriage and divorce. Been there, done that already.
I’d read Temple of Gold by William Goldman, an under-rated (to me) 20th century author. In it, the protagonist bounces from his first serious, but failed romance, into a marriage with a woman he had a deep attraction to, but who was intellectually and socially inferior to him, or at least so he conceived it.
And I had a deep but well-concealed fear that if I stayed with Teri, I would be condemning myself to a life that would make Lolita’s marriage look promising.
Totally my fault, blame it on my immaturity. Blame it on the summer breezes in Florida. But I kept after her like we were two rabbits in heat, whenever I could, which was as often as I wanted to. She was there. I could run out and get lost doing some ill-advised get rich scheme for a few days, and come back and pick up right where we left off. No questions asked. She would still be there, staying well past her original intention to visit her sister.
And still I wouldn’t commit. Just enjoy what we had. It was more than just physical, it was primeval, deep, in a strange way spiritual, almost a Green Mansions kind of connection independent of any external realities.
Finally she said she was going to go back home if I didn’t want her to move in with me…that was all, not even “marry me” or “tell everyone I’m your GF” or any of that. She just wanted to be there when I came home, and to cook and to clean for me, and to keep me warm every night.
And out of fear that our bond would flicker out, even though it had shown no signs of doing so, I let her go.
A couple of months later I was hanging out with a couple of Teri’s sister’s roommates, bumped into them in the hallway or something, and asked about Teri. The roommate delivered the news, which shook me on the inside, but which I stoically pretended not to feel: Teri had gone back home, and after a few weeks had found a guy who was a dead ringer for me looks-wise, and was engaged to him.
In retrospect, it probably still would not have been too late for us, if I had had the courage to move.
But in my youthful wisdom, I reasoned that I couldn’t lose what I didn’t try for, and so all I said was something lame like “tell her I said ‘hi’ if you see her.”
The truth, painfully learned years, even decades later, is that I could always get my intellectual appetite fed a dozen different ways, but I only felt a connection like she and I had a couple of other times, a small percentage of all the relationships I have been through.
Fortunately, one of the women I have had that feeling with is the mother of my son. Unfortunately, she is a lot more complicated…high maintenance would be a more direct and honest way to put it….than Teri ever would have been.
But I was constitutionally incapable of recognizing and accepting something so freely offered, and with so few strings attached. Deep down I felt that there must be some catch that would rise up to cause our relationship to fail.
Only years afterwards did I realize that it was only my fear that kept me from having something deeper and more satisfying than the lifestyle I pursued for decades after that.
But I do hope she found happiness. But though I feel flattered that she chose someone who reminded her of me, deep down inside I know that I settled for my second best option (if you can even say best), and that I forced her to do the same.
One of the saddest phrases of all time, and this story is a prime example of it, is “If only I knew then, what I know now.”
So to paraphrase Jimmy Durante, “Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are!”
Many other relationships were easy to discern that ultimate failure was embedded within, but try as hard as I can to find that excuse for the choice I made with Teri, I cannot objectively find one piece of evidence to support that there was any problem other than my own fear.
And having to admit that to myself has made me a better man, but it has also been deeply humbling, and in many ways has touched old wounds, and re-opened old scars, so ancient I thought that they were healed or gone.
Many scars have healed…but that one still remains, to this day. And I can’t even remember her last name, so there wouldn’t even be a chance to FB her, as I have occasionally done with other parts of my past. It is a bridge that has burned, and will never exist again. A bridge that I CHOSE to burn, and which I CHOSE not to rebuild when I probably still had the chance.
Your writing has a way of stirring up memories and feelings, Jack, ones that I seldom delve into. But your story touched a nerve concerning the person I was.
Now I must try to get some sleep, and hope not to dream this night.
“Everything ends badly, otherwise it wouldn’t end” (quote from Cocktail) - I heard it when I was young enough to think bartenders had it all together, but it is a good line, nonetheless…
Johnnie come lately, but Jack (and rps, and VB and RS), thanks for sharing. This whole conversation took me back to a person I haven’t been in decades, and it was a bitter, bittersweet visit…