Dead Man's B-Day Party

My parents died when I was fourteen. My mother died on her 36th birthday. I found out about my father's death a few months later and, at that moment, I decided to live life - not sit around like a mundane person.

I always considered mundane people dead.

Today is the birthday of a man who took me on a 500 mile trip to visit his mother. Upon arriving, his mother gave me a wedding dress, a ring and I fled from the minister. Our first day there involved extracating me from a locked bathroom with the promise of an annulment.  I was nineteen.  He was twenty-five.

He talked me out the annulment. A few days later, after his vehicle broke down in Idaho and we had to wait for a mechanic to arrive, I offerred to give him the one thing I thought men wanted. At the time, I was as vegan as I could be and on that day, I was going to overlook the animal byproduct.

He was grossed out by that!

I kid you not!

I was not supposed to do what later became termed as "that thing in Idaho".

We were married eighteen months.  He destroyed my guitars in fits of rage.  My family warned him, the day her Dad's Peavy is gone, is the day Siegfred is gone. 

He didn't listen. 

One Christmas, he was pissed that I woke up early to practice.  He grabbed my Dad's guitar and Hendrixed it.  I still have some of the pieces.  My musician friends found me a replacement but the serial number on the new bass is huge!  It's not the same. 

The man beat me horrendously.  Once it was because I was dirty minded; he would claim that I made a better mistress than a wife.  The only thing he said I was good for was an arm ornament.

In November of '91, he went to a bar and found a man who dated me one night several years before.  He brought the guy home and let the guy recount how he took me to a bar in '87.  I refused to drink and then took me to a hotel where I refused to get involved with him.  I barely remember making an excuse about needing to go to work and left.

My then-husband said that he found proof that I was using 'sex as a weapon' against men.  The sad truth was that, at the time the man dated me, I had realized that I had feelings for the man I would eventually marry.  No man had a chance to get me in bed, except the object of my affections.

This did not soothe my ex. 

Those two actually beat me that night.  My ex threw me down and raped me in front of the guy.  I lost consciousness.  Upon awakening I grabbed our baby daughter, my 5-string Steinberger, and left.  

He stalked me for years.  The courts threw out my restraining order and the cops couldn't do much.  He'd use visitation as an opportunity to cop a feel.  He wouldn't visit with our daughter unless I were present.

The man would tamper with my car and tell me what was wrong with it.  He'd hide in the back seat when I picked our daughter up from the daycare.

The windows on my apartment would get broken.  Things were missing. 

Of course, he wouldn't pay child support or share our money.  He called his game  'starving the spouse' saying that 'all is fair in love and war'.  Yet, he always took the tax deductions. 

I ended up changing my entire name and moving.  I asked for court ordered supervised exchanges.  It helped.  When he couldn't see me anymore, he stopped visiting until he remarried.   He found me in '97 and his wife began the contact. 

His new wife would call me asking for advice on how to deal with this person.  I don't know.  If I could deal with him, I'd probably be married to him...still. 

Sadly, I recognized her as the woman I would catch in our apartment during our marriage.  He married his mistress and she doesn't look good in black n' blue.

She used to be an actress.  She was the damsel in distress in most of the plays at the local opera house.  She was once so beautiful. The stress of the years were not a friend to her. 

I see their pictures from time to time on Facebook.  I feel so sad for them.  I feel sorry for their mundane life. 

I wonder what it would be like living a dead man's party. 

Oh, and to this day, when he hears my name he has no clue who I am.  I'm in the papers a lot.  I'm on the news.  He has no clue.  He tells our daughter that I'm a lazy woman who doesn't do a damn thing. 

Ha! 

What a dolt! 

It's his birthday.  I hope that he can find an adventure that doesn't involve beating a woman unconscious.  We're much more fun functional and awake.   But then, what would a mundane man know about that?

Cheers,

S.