The weirdest breakup I ever had or, How I moved to Ohio

As per my previous post, I didn’t get any of the stuff done that I had mentioned (vaguely) that I was going to do. It’s okay, because I was looking at my About page here just now and I got hit with inspiration. Bye-bye, mental logjam. At least a little bit.

Okay. You may be surprised to hear that the end of my marriage was NOT the weirdest breakup I have ever been through.

Bit of back story — and this gives me something else to write about, after this: I mentioned, but will not find it to link to it just now, that I spent several years in the Church of All Worlds (CAW)… 1996 to 2003, I think. If you were ever connected to the Neopagan community between the 1980s and the 2000s, you might have heard of them. If you heard of them, you might have heard that they really pushed polyamory as a valid alternative lifestyle. The rest of you think that’s a new thing that the genderdorks or the LGBXYZ invented. Not so. The word was even coined by the founders of my church. One of them, anyway, and his wife (now passed on, from cancer).

Sorry about that, by the way.

I had had relationship problems before I met my wasband, and while I did try a rebound monogamous relationship after he and I split up and then another rebound monogamous relationship after that one ended, I eventually came to terms — I thought — with my situation and decided that I must be wired to be poly. So I began seeking out that sort of relationship since I thought it fitted me better.

This led me to getting involved with a man I’ll call Bill, who was married to a woman I’ll call Tink. That is a shortened version of her actual first name, same for him and his, so at least this way no one will find this from googling them. I just want to tell the story and be done, without any followup drama. It’s a helluva story.

Bill and I had history before we had anything like a relationship. We were both on an email list associated with the church, set up for church members who didn’t have anyone nearby to form a congregation with. (It was called Internest and it was many years after I left before I finally stopped trying to insert an S into the word internet. Worse than changing the year when you write checks.) Every now and again someone would get the idea to exchange messenger handles — back then, instead of texting, you installed a little bit of software on your computer that you could use to chat with other people without needing their phone number. Somehow Bill wound up with my ICQ number (for you nerds in the know: I remember my ICQ number! And still have a working login for it!And had a working login for it until it was shut down this year! And it is eight digits long!) and we became fast online buddies. We were basically very similar kinds of weird. We had even both read Illusions by Richard Bach. Bill told me that was his major litmus test for making new friends, whether they had read that book. Made me feel kind of special.

Eventually the whole thing evolved into a flirtation and then into something rather more hot and heavy. I knew the whole time that he was married and I had passing acquaintance with his wife, so I knew they were sort of open. Though we did hit one snag when it transpired that she hadn’t known how far along we’d gotten. I chatted with her directly and we sorted that out, though. I was living in Memphis by this point and went on a trip to Indiana, where they lived, to visit them and actually get to know Bill in person. We all hit it off hugely. I was hopeful.

My roommate in Memphis made the decision not to renew his lease, instead opting to move in with a friend of his, who I didn’t know at all and who owned his own house. I wasn’t going to be able to afford a place on my own and, far as I knew, had no other options than going back to Louisiana — yep, to stay with my dad. Not something I particularly wanted to do. My car had broken down not that long before, too. Tink and Bill and I had already discussed “rescuing” me “from the South” — their words, not mine — and so we went ahead with plans. I was to live with them while I found a job and got back on my feet and then, I supposed, I might live nearby where I could hang out with them often. I was kind of vague on that particular point.

Early days were fantastic. Also weird, because on the basis of almost no in-person acquaintance we were already doing the long-term couple thing of finishing one another’s sentences. There was even this unbelievable incident after I found a job downtown when I was waiting for them to pick me up after work and this snippet of song from Schoolhouse Rock started running through my head and when they arrived, Bill crowed that they’d found the boxed set of the entire show when they were out shopping that day. I hadn’t even mentioned my earworm.

It wasn’t all perfect, though.

Bill and Tink had a young toddler together: his first and only, her third after losing her first to adoption and her second to a vindictive ex. They were extremely structured with him and there were times I felt like maybe I was intruding a little too much just being there in the house. I also still had issues having to do with the loss of my own son. I always wondered if Tink ever picked up on that. I didn’t try to be Second Mom or anything, but she knew my background.

Bill worked as a 911 dispatcher, and I never could figure out why, because he couldn’t cope with it. As long as things went relatively well, he was okay but if he got a bad call, he’d come home and go upstairs to their bedroom and hide from the world and you got the distinct impression of a thundercloud hovering over the house. It was understood from day one that you did not bother him in any way, shape, or form while he was in that state. Seeing how he was when he was just arguing with, as he put it, “idiots” on the internet, I was not inclined to break that rule.

Tink was in nursing school and occasionally, there were opportunities for Bill and me to fool around outside of our usual scheduled interludes because the kiddo was in daycare (they had him there at least a few days a week because of Bill’s job and Tink’s schooling and for kiddo to get used to school in general). But if Bill heard Tink coming up the walk, he’d jump away from me like we were doing something wrong. I already felt like an intruder in their lives and this just made me feel worse.

Stuff started getting REALLY weird that August. We went to this festival in southern Indiana (we drove through John Mellencamp’s hometown on the way!) called Grow Closer. That was where I met Matt.

Up to that point I’d only known Matt from Internest. I remembered almost nothing about him (he said we’d had a big fight once… that should have been my first red flag, but this story is not about him, so), but he acted caring and got very flirty and eventually, we hooked up.

I’ll interject here a bit about the polyamorous community: they have this concept called the primary/secondary relationship model. To wit: you have a primary partner who is the equivalent of, or may actually be, a spouse. Then you have secondary partners who are basically side fucks. You might tell yourself you love them a lot and value them in your life, blah blah blah, but that’s what they are. Most of the polyfolk I knew in CAW did primary/secondary.

Obviously, Bill and Tink were primary partners with one another. Like, way insular, us-against-the-world primary partners. True to form, while we were at the festival they slept together and, well, stuff. I was the odd one out. Matt was married too, but his wife was in England at the time and he was there with his secondary partner at that time, Michele. I saw no issue with carrying on with him. It wasn’t like I was exactly assigned elsewhere (so to speak… no one did any actual assigning, and even my not-my-own-best-friend self would have run away like my ass was on fire if they’d tried) and if I didn’t get to be someone’s primary, I wasn’t going to ask permission either.

Matt and I also hit it off hugely, and he even came to see me a few weeks later and stayed for the weekend. Bill and Tink went out of town with kiddo while he was there. I was getting weird vibes off of them. Tink tried to tell me at some point that Matt and I were moving too fast. I thought that was rich coming from someone who had, very soon after meeting Bill, decided he was “the one” in a situation where one or both of them had been cheating on someone else. (I didn’t say any of this out loud.) The weirdness continued at Halloween, when we had our Samhain ritual and afterwards Bill and I somehow wound up on the floor being affectionate (clothes on) and he paused, looked at me, and said he always wanted to remember me that way. I was puzzled, but blew it off as him just being Bill.

Not a week later, Bill went to the gun range; he and Tink both had handguns and did regular target practice. She was in class this time, so it was just him. He came back home, did his usual sit on the sofa with a folding table set up to clean his gun, and I was in the little office off on the side on the computer and kind of chatted with him a little bit as he worked. Then I got done with whatever I was doing and went upstairs to my room.

His gun went off.

I FREAKED and went out my door and yelled over the railing, “Are you okay???”

“…Yes, I’m fine.”

I rushed down the stairs to see him indeed standing upright and uninjured, but looking around for the bullet hole. He wasn’t sure where it had gone. I helped him search for a few minutes, but nada. Extremely puzzling. Bullets don’t just disappear.

A few minutes into this, he remarked that I shouldn’t have been talking to him while he cleaned his gun, because I distracted him and that’s why it happened.

I felt bad about being the reason for the accident. I felt thankful he hadn’t gotten hurt and that I hadn’t either and that no one else had been home.

And then I had time to properly think about it. And I got angry.

I should interject some back story again. My current writing habit is not a new writing habit. Back then, it was a habit expressed as a personal blog. Everyone knew I kept this personal blog. I would talk about my day, pontificate about random issues, get silly… all the things I do now, here and at social media.

(I actually still keep a personal blog. This was a different one, at a different URL.)

There have been times I’ve proper flamed someone’s face off because they went way too far in some act of malfeasance. I did not do that this time. This time, I wrote a post to no particular person, no one by name, stating that next time I was doing something that was a dangerous distraction, it would be helpful if the person would tell me I was being a problem before things got out of hand. I can’t remember my exact words, but that was the gist of it.

Again, I did not name names. I didn’t even spell out what had happened.

I’m getting tired of writing about this. I didn’t think it would still bother me at all twenty-two years on. So I’ll try to wrap this up a little faster.

Long story short, he dumped me for broadcasting his business on the internet. Remember what I said about not naming him. He told me I had to leave by some kind of deadline. I forget what it was now. Then he and his wife proceeded to be very inhospitable to me. On the one hand, she pretended to be sorry it was all happening. On the other hand, they’d go out to dinner and bring nothing back for me, leaving me to forage leftovers in the fridge with no car and no grocery stores in walking distance, and she’d say and do little things to make it very clear she was still in good books with him while I was in the shit. It actually took me about a week to get everything together, get the U-Haul, quit my job that I hadn’t even had three months, and go. Another friend from CAW had offered her room in Columbus, Ohio. That would be near Matt, so that’s where I decided to go.

Speaking of Matt, there was another odd episode where I said something to Tink in front of Bill about expecting a call from him, and Bill got upset. The asshole had just dumped me for bullshit reasons, I had never been his primary partner in the first place, and I was suddenly supposed to care that he had any opinion whatsoever about my new boyfriend who had not (yet!) dumped me for bullshit reasons. Right. I even got lectured by Tink about it. I can’t fucking even.

When I left, I was so upset that I literally could not swallow. On the way out of Indiana, that fucking Whitney Houston remake of “I Will Always Love You” came on the radio and I wept. (Spoiler: I didn’t always, actually. Time wounds all heels.)

Otherwise the drive was okay, I guess. Did you know Interstate 80/90 through northern Indiana and northern Ohio connects, or one of them does anyway, to San Francisco? I found that out this past May when I saw the road signs on the way up here and was just flabbergasted. Life is weird.

I got where I was going and wound up in even more shit. That’s another essay. Actually, that would be a whole fucking series of essays, hopefully each shorter than this one has been. If I ever write them. I doubt it, at least here. I have somewhere else they can go, though.

I will just say this: I know I put myself into worse shit because soon after I got to Ohio, there was a party at Matt’s place and everyone asked me for my side of the breakup with Bill. I told it. AND THEY ALL STAYED FRIENDS WITH HIM. I don’t always ask people to pick a side in a breakup, but it’s pretty fucked up they couldn’t pick a side in that one. God, what if he’d hit me. What if the BULLET had hit me, for that matter. I’m glad I will never have to answer that question. They each took their own garbage out of my life in the intervening years, in one way or another, and good fucking riddance.

Honestly? You want my opinion? I think Bill fired a blank that day. A literal blank. He had just been at the range, and gun ranges often (always?) sell bullets. He could have bought a box while he was out. Either he expected to dump me over the “accident” or he had an idea I might blog about the incident and he could nail me for that. It explains both the lack of a bullet hole and his odd statement the Halloween just gone about “always remembering” me “this way.” And for all I know, Tink was in on it. They were certainly close enough. But if they won’t talk to me, even a quarter-century on, I’ll never know for sure.

Anyway, there you go. My weirdest breakup ever.

…

The reason I said several paragraphs ago that I just want to tell the story and be done is because I tried. I did. I wanted to figure out what the hell happened and maybe possibly get back to being friends again. I wasn’t expecting any more than that and, frankly, didn’t want it. But I needed at least one of them to come forward and explain what the fuck that was and why.

Well, Bill’s a fucking coward and refuses to have anything further to do with me. Tink, for her part, did make overtures once. It was okay until I started posting passive-aggressively about what happened in the breakup — I still wanted an explanation for her behavior back then — and then she unfriended me again. But every once in a very great while I see her at the edges of some radfem discussion on social media, going on about trans or something. I want to tell all her friends how “feminist” she is when her husband emotionally abuses a woman. I keep my mouth shut instead and back away.

But that’s why I don’t care about bringing them into this: I can’t. They won’t engage. They did their damage and they moved on. So I’ve moved on too.