The Bastard

-OR-

I was married once before and it sucked big sweaty monkey nuts

Amy asked, so I will deliver: the story of my first marriage. It all begins my sophomore year of college. R and I had dated for a while and been through breakups #1 and #2. It was the day after Valen.tine's 2001, and I had none. Sitting at the coffee shop, in walks a pretty good looking guy, a regular, but outside of his normal time. I was a regular, too, and the owner decided that this guy and I should talk. We talked for a while, exchanged numbers and all that jazz. That night I got a phone call from the guy. We dated for a while, did that college sleeping together before we really should have thing, etc. He had been living with his parents (ewww, a townie that lives at home, somebody should have warned me), but decided to get his own place not long after we started dating. He was looking for something serious, I was just playing the field for a while. Of course, things didn't work out. We remained friends, he came to me for life advice.

One day he starts talking about the military. Really seriously. I had concerns, he seemed very predisposed to alcoholism (saw getting drunk as a way to "escape" reality, didn't know his limits, never stopped drinking before he was drunk) and that worried me. He joined anyway. He was at staging (self-explanatory) for basic training for the Army on 9-11. He started his training 2 days later. I flew out to Oklahoma for his graduation (I was the only friend he invited, the rest was his family, we truly were best friends at the time). It was very emotional, especially with all of the post-9-11 stuff going on, deployments coming up and all that. He proposed, we picked out my ring at the mall the afternoon after his graduation ceremony, it got resized super quick and he put it on my finger the morning I left to go back home, which also happened to be his 19th birthday.

We eloped 5 weeks later when he was home on leave. His mom was furious, but we were in love. 2 weeks later he had developed an abdominal hernia and had to temporarily stop his AIT training (he could continue with the classwork, but the physical part had to be suspended). That meant a whole lot of time with nothing to do, a lot of free time to explore the town. And if anybody knows anything about military towns, it's that they are filled with strip clubs, bars, and strip clubs. Which is where he started spending all that free time. At that time, I looked way hotter than I do in the pics I posted (not fishing for compliments, I lost the perfect abs and tight little butt when I became a SAHW, I admit it, so even though I do still like the way I look there was a time when I felt better about my body, except my boobs which were smaller back then), so why he was at strip clubs is beyond me. Yeah, I was a dozen states away working on my college degree (I had already enrolled for the semester when we eloped, and had I dropped out of school I couldn't have moved with him anyway since there was a waiting list for base housing), but I was still his wife. Anyway, lots of drinking ensued. Drunk + strippers + calling your wife to tell her all about it = BASTARD!

And he did call, every night. Sometimes we talked about when I would move out there, sometimes we talked about my classes, sometimes we talked about his hernia surgery and how bad I felt that I couldn't fly out to be with him (midterms week, plus no money because he spent it all on strippers and beer). The conversation always ended on how much he drank and which stripper was his favorite that night. He felt the need to tell me what she was wearing, that he had hit on her, that he was taking her to a movie next week. Of course, he didn't remember any of those conversations when he was sober. But I did. It went on for a couple months, me yelling at him, him crying and promising to change and begging me to help him, everything happening again the next night.

I gave up and asked for a divorce, but he wanted one last chance to work on things in person. He flew me out for a week. We were supposed to spend the week together, talking, maybe seeing a counselor, trying to work on things. The second I got off the plane, he started rubbing all over me and trying to make out. I told him before I went out there that he had no hope of getting anything and that he had a lot of work to do to convince me to stay married to him. Guess he didn't listen. One night I forced him to take me to the strip club he always called me from. We went with a group of his friends, the guys pulled me aside and told me that they actually didn't go to this one much, it was too expensive, they usually went to the cheap dirty one where you could get a little "extra" in the lapdance room. I enjoyed myself, I went in with the mentality that I was single and I wanted to have fun. He threw a fit, when we left he threatened to go inside and punch every guy that looked at me or mistook me for one of the dancers. He was drunk, I only remembered him having 2 drinks, but he must have gotten a lot more and hid them from me because he could barely walk.

That night I sat up late with his "best friend" talking about things. This is the guy that Bastard told all of our problems to, the one he confided in. So, I talked to him, got the inside info on Bastard and how he saw things. He told me how much of an asshole Bastard really was, and that is some heavy information coming from the guy he considered his best friend. Bastard was passed out way before the friend and I started talking, but woke up at some point while the friend and I were sitting in the courtyard talking. He must have walked another way to the friends' room and when best friend and I weren't there, he started screaming. He threatened to kill us both. I spent the last 2 days of my "visit" with the best friend and a few others, basically hiding from Bastard. He knew where I was, but he also knew that he couldn't get near me, so he left me alone. I didn't go outside without at least 3 guys around me, not even to walk from the door to the car, and I was never left alone in the house.

4 years later I messaged back and forth with Bastard's best friend from high school (different best friend, this one I'll call DJ for simplicity). DJ hadn't talked to Bastard since he went to basic training. Bastard had thrown things all over his house and nearly stabbed him with a pair of scissors when DJ beat him at some video game. Had I known any of that then, things would have been so different. I didn't know that he had forced his HS girlfriend to get an abortion in Canada (lived near the border) because he didn't want to be stuck with her forever. I didn't know he had threatened to beat up several of my friends that knew his real personality if they ever told me. He somehow scared everybody without letting me see it, and if a big group of his friends hadn't "spontaneously" decided to do the same thing they knew he was doing that night, I might have been too late in seeing it. He had never threatened me before, never raised his voice. Anytime I had said anything to him about his drinking or told him I didn't want to be with him, he cried. No yelling, no attacking me back, just crying and begging. I don't know what made him snap that night when he never had before, but I'm glad I was behind a couple locked doors before he found me.

Several months later we were divorced (later as in after I left the town he was in, the convo with DJ happened kinda recently, sorry I wrote in a screwy order, that's how my brain works). He dragged it out and scammed the government out of over $6000 that was supposed to go to me that I never saw a penny of. I wanted him out of my life, so I never pursued it when I should have. I will always regret any part of my life that involved him, except the day of our divorce. I freed myself from a worthless, manipulative, fake jackass, and I made sure he knew that I was better than him and not afraid of him. And every day I know that I care about myself enough to never associate with that kind of scum again. I'm still a little bitter, I still wish I had gone after the money (because it could have led to military criminal charges against him, including fraud), but as far as I'm concerned he died a long time ago. Unless I ever find out who he is dating, because I will save her the trouble of finding out who he really is on her own.