“People have one-nighters all the time,” I assured her while moving my eyes around her hospital room. She had a private room that was probably four-stars by hospital Zagat’s standards. Her adjustable bed looked comfortable, as she reached up to turn off the fluorescent light attached to the wall above her head. There was a caramel colored couch underneath the almost floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the Crosstown. A blue accent wall opposite her bed had a three-tier bookshelf against it that was empty until I put the flowers I brought her on it.

“I think the nurses at that desk outside thought I was your irresponsible condom-less boyfriend.” I sat down on the desk chair next to her bed and propped my cap toe shoes on the foot of her bed.

Cheney half-smiled, “He was condom-less and irresponsible alright, but not my boyfriend…just a bartender who looked really cute one night, and he had nice teeth. But I guess I’m just as irresponsible for not taking my pill every day,” she shrugged.

“Did he at least pay for the procedure? Or help pay for it?”

“He’s a bartender who still has roommates,” she said while looking at me and raising one eyebrow.  I assumed that answer was supposed to indirectly tell me that he didn’t have the money to pay.

“How’s work going?” she asked to change the subject.

“It’s going well,” I said. “I had lunch last week in the downtown Barnes & Noble. I was eating my over-priced Panini in a window seat while a homeless woman sat on the sidewalk leaning against a streetlight with an empty collection cup next to her. Our eyes met a couple of times. I felt guilty.”

Telling someone who just had a living being ripped from inside her that you feel guilty about something, anything, is preposterous…borderline ignorant. I apologetically raised my eyebrows and gave a half-smile realizing my mistake. Cheney did the exact same thing back…apology accepted.

“You survived Amanda’s wedding day? I thought about you.”

“I did. Morgan and Bishop came to town. Bishop was sad he didn’t get to see you. It only made his crush on you stronger and…”

“This is the worst thing I’ve ever done,” she interrupted while staring at the small flat screen hanging from the ceiling in the corner. It was as if she made the confession to the bald dude from Ghost Hunters, who was talking to the camera bathed in night vision.

I’ve spent plenty of drinks listening to Cheney tell me about her days as a club kid in Manhattan…the LSD lollipops, glow sticking, lesbian makeouts and 3-day sleep binges. She moved to the Midwest to get away from all that and just write. She landed in Minneapolis with a trust fund and a Blackberry filled with the names of a dozen editors in New York who agreed to accept her stuff on spec. When she told me those stories, it was with a strange sense of accomplishment and never any regret.

But this was different. This was all regret and nothing else. It was hard for me to comfort her, and she doesn’t have any close girlfriends to offer female empathy.  I imagine some night in the near or distant future, while the two of us are having one of our all night drinking and music listening marathons, she will discuss the guilt and what-ifs of this whole situation. But not now.

“Are you keeping this from your parents?”

“Fuck. Yeah,” she took her eyes off the cute girl from Ghost Hunters with glasses whose breasts got mysteriously larger since season one. “The administrator of my trust promised me she would list this as something else on the monthly accounting…like a urinary tract infection or something, I don’t know. My parents rarely look at those accountings anyway.”

“What time are they releasing you tomorrow?”

“The nurse said I could leave as early as 6 a.m.”

“Okay. I’ll be back tomorrow to pick you up at six.”

“Thanks.”

Melissa has her fake pissed-off voice and her genuine pissed-off voice. The question about the Adidas sneaker fell somewhere in-between the two.

She meant the Adidas Rod Laver resting in the corner of my bedroom. It’s taken up permanent residence there because, despite my searches, I cannot locate its right-footed counterpart. So there it sits, looking like a misbehaved elementary school kid sentenced to stand in the corner as punishment. The only thing missing is the needle-nosed dunce cap.

Last I checked, a new pair goes for about $60.00 on Zappos, but then there’s the breaking-in period and I don’t have the dedication for that right now. If I’m patient, the Prodigal Shoe will find its way home when it’s ready.

“Nooooooo!” I yelled from the basement where I was playing the table-top Ms. Pac Man machine –Amanda and I once had make-up sex on it. The floor is so thin that there was no need for Melissa to shout the one stair level that separates us.

“So you just want it to sit here and collect more dust and cobwebs? There’s a spider living in it!”

“Yeeeeeeeesssss!”

Melissa was cleaning because Bishop and Morgan are in town from Austin and they were due here in a few minutes. Despite our offer, they opted to stay in an apartment near the Bryant Lake Bowl because it’s near the apartment where Bob Stinson died.

She knows they’re like brothers to me and I think she was more than a little nervous about meeting them. Two nights ago, she was looking at all the pictures in my old scrapbook…the three of us in little league…at each other’s birthday parties…standing next to Bishop’s hospital bed after he broke his leg skateboarding in second grade…posing with Morgan’s Ford Bronco that we spent our 16th summer refurbishing…at high school keggers…UT graduation day…my brother’s funeral.

Their weekend trip to Minneapolis coincided with Amanda’s weekend wedding. The fact that Bishop and Morgan got together and decided that they needed to visit on this, of all weekends, is touching and embarrassing. But they witnessed the months where telling me not to think about Amanda was like telling me not to blink…no matter how hard I tried, I had to do it thousands of times daily.

But now it’s just after 5pm and the opening notes of “Here Comes the Bride” are likely bellowing from the church organ as the aisles of heads swivel to the sanctuary entrance. Amanda stands there in a dress that should be anything but white, hoping her fine hair that she constantly complained about stays curly at least long enough for the best man’s toast.

And here I sit in my living room with my two oldest buds and the only girl that matters, watching the UT football home opener. Melissa’s ponytail sticks out from behind a “Hook ‘em Horns” baseball cap as she stands in the kitchen, holding a bottle of Budweiser laughing at Morgan’s Dane Cook impression…the over-annunciation, the exaggerated stepping, the crouching, the lack of any punchlines whatsoever. It is quite funny.

Melissa has thick, naturally curly hair and she told me on our second date that she wants Tom Petty’s Here Comes My Girl playing through the church p.a. system, as she begins her walk in a dress that I want to be the whitest of white.

* e-mail from Allison – click to view larger (I redacted her husband’s name)
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Journal entry typed out for easier reading:

Allison’s on her way over. It’s Sunday night. I’m slightly hungover from too much wine last night. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Nothing much I’m sure. Maybe my hand up her blouse. I’m pretty horny now. The girl wants me…bad! We spoke on the phone last night – late. She was whispering so her husband wouldn’t hear. I was so drunk that I barely remember anything we talked about.

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Commentary:

The image below the journal page is an e-mail Allison sent me right after our first heavy make-out session. That make-out ended-up being the gateway to our affair.

We were embroiled in a marital affair typical of a Lifetime Movie of the Week starring Judith Light. Allison was married, so for her it was an extra-marital affair. For me, it was just a single guy doing things you shouldn’t do with a married woman.

I took notice of her right away on her first day of work…a cute brown-haired woman with an even cuter little body. I also saw the wedding ring. The work e-mails during the day turned into e-mails on our personal Yahoo accounts at night. The coffee breaks at work turned into coffee at Plan B in Uptown and beers at the Turf Club.

We went to movies (held hands at Juno), talked late nights on the phone (her talking from her basement away from her husband), had pet names (I called her “hun,”she called me “sweets”), went to dinners (she didn’t have a joint checking account so she paid sometimes) and logged quality time on my old red futon couch (she felt amazing in and out of her sweaters).

She fell in love with me…the e-mails, cards and old-school love letters she would give me at work went on and on about her falling in love with me, and falling out of love with her husband. I wasn’t in a relationship at that time and more than a little lonely. I had this adorable woman throwing all her love at me, emotionally and physically, and it was hard to turn it away.

I felt momentary stabs of guilt when I would catch myself thinking that my girlfriend is married and it didn’t seem weird. The absurdity of it all would hit me and I would pull back my emotions from it. Then she would come over to my apartment on Humboldt, smile at me, take off her shirt before the door was even closed behind her and the guilt was gone – replaced by that tight little dancer’s body on top of mine.

She would arrive home from my place late and her husband would already be asleep. Lying there in fear that her husband would smell another man on her – a late night shower would be too suspicious – she would cry convinced she’s married to the wrong person.

But there’s periods that all people go through when they think they’ll never be loved. This past winter was one of those periods for me, and knowing Amanda was engaged made it even worse. I would read Allison’s love letters over and over while the snow piled up against my windows and the wine piled up in my liver. Her letters helped.

Melissa calls it softcore porn…she found the bodyrock.tv bookmark on my browser. Zuzana…a goddess. I’m sure there are guys who watch her workout videos for the wrong reasons…watching the videos like the Warren Commission watching the Zapruder film, pausing frame-by-frame for something they may have missed the first 1000 times.

I found her one night while searching for body-weight workouts on Youtube. It was too cold to go to the gym, and going to Lifetime Fitness these days means about a 50/50 chance of running into Amanda and seeing how she’s gotten shorter and wider. Staying home with Zuzana made me stronger and faster.

Each of Zuzana’s videos begins with a familiar, “Hey guys,” or, “Hi body rockers,” in Zuzana’s eastern European accent where every syllable is sharply annunciated.  Her workouts use minimal equipment and are filled with spandex, sweat and Zuzana’s heaving chest. If the sweat froze in her abs, she would have perfectly square sweat ice-cubes.

We’re on our way to Melissa’s storage facility on a summer night when the humidity sticks to you like Saran Wrap. I tell her Zuzana stays in my bookmarks…not negotiable.

Going up the elevator to Melissa’s 4’ x 4’ storage unit, and the cement floors make it unusually cool inside among the maze of metal-padlocked doors.  She wants to get one thing…a candle. I said we were just at Target, why didn’t she buy one there?

And she told me this story:

When Melissa was 11-years-old, her grandmother gave her a small votive candle with red wax surrounded by glass that’s slightly burnt on the inside. It was one day after they buried her grandpa.

Fearing he would never find his life-partner, Melissa’s grandpa stopped by a neighborhood Catholic Church every day, put 25 cents in the rusty tin offering box and lit one votive candle to represent the hope that God would send him the woman he was supposed to marry. It was always the same candle…the corner candle in the bottom right-hand row.

The day after Melissa’s grandmother accepted his proposal, he stopped by the church and told the parish priest how God had answered his prayer. The priest gladly handed him the candle and he rushed to give it to his new fiancé. Melissa’s grandmother told her that tiny candle meant more to her than her wedding ring.

So that’s the candle we leave the storage facility with. On the way home in the car, Melissa cups it with both hands like holding a tiny bird that can’t fly.

But we’re not in the car, unfortunately. We’re sitting in my backyard on a calm, windless evening in plastic Adirondack-looking chairs. There are no distractions to rob my attention away from Melissa’s question – not even a mosquito to slap against my arm.

It needs to be a resounding, “NO,” on par with the way instructors teach women to yell it in self-defense classes as the guy in the ridiculously-padded suit mock attacks them, which comes in handy if a man with limited mobility ever attacks a woman in real-life.

With every past girlfriend, a “no” would be an honest answer from me…until now. I hesitate to tell the truth because I can’t pass it off as a mistake made five or ten years ago. It was only two years ago that I cheated on Amanda. It’s not like I was unprepared for Melissa’s question. Next to the how many women have you been with question, it’s a relationship inevitability.

Amanda had just gotten out of the hospital where she spent three days with pancreatitis. She was going to come over and then wake-up early to meet-up with her parents. My cell phone vibrated.

Text from Kim: do you want me to come see you?

My phone call to Amanda: Hey, it would make more sense if you stayed at your place tonight since you have to be up early tomorrow, don’t you think?

Amanda: But I want to see you…(she said it in a whiny, baby voice)

Me: I want to see you too, sweetie, but it’s late and you know how finding parking is in Uptown at this hour. I’m just going to go to the gym, anyway. Come over tomorrow afternoon when your parents leave, though.

Amanda: Okay…I’ll be over tomorrow. Bye.

Me: Bye

My text to Kim: sure, how soon can you be over?

Kim came over and we had a lot of fun that night and more in the morning. Kim knew I had a girlfriend, so she had no problem being out the door right after she took a shower. I opened every window in my apartment to rid it of Kim’s perfume as quickly as possible. I never believed that one could smell like sex, but I took an extra-long shower regardless. I threw the sheets in the laundry, flipped the mattress and vacuumed the bedroom carpet for some reason. As far as I was concerned, this was a crime scene…move along, move along…nothing to see here.

Amanda came over and after three days of not seeing me, she was more than willing to make-up for it. It’s the first and only time in my life that I felt like a sociopath. The blatant lie of telling her I was going to the gym came so effortlessly. The actual act of infidelity was completely unaccompanied by even the tiniest sliver of guilt or remorse – even to this day. In fact, I remain quite impressed by having sex with two different girls within a 24-hour span.

I tell Melissa all of the above and you know what? She already knew about it. Shortly after it happened, I told my good friend, Jeanine (Melissa’s sister) about what I had done. And being sisters, Jeanine told Melissa…Melissa only asked me to see if I would lie about it.

Kim J.

p.s. – Kim fully approved this post. She even sent me the picture of her you see here. On the chance that Amanda reads this, it’ll be fresh news to her.

“I mean, it was your most recent long-term relationship before we met.” She washes the dishes right after she dirties them. She had to shout the last question over the running hot water.

The freelance blogging is still bringing in a little over a grand a month. It’s decent cash for writing 26 blog posts per week while sitting on my IKEA couch listening to/watching the Music Choice Alternative Channel. It reminds me of watching VH1’s Pop-Up Video in the 1990’s. Musical tidbits about the group or artist flash in plain text as the song plays. It’s hard not to take in the arguably useful alterna-rock information as I work.

Kim (from Matt and Kim) attended Penn State for one year on a track scholarship.

The Lemonheads were a Boston Trio that formed in the mid-80’s.

“I mean, it’s got to be a little weird that she’s going to marry the guy she began dating right after you.” Melissa is saying, “I mean,” before each question. She never does that, so I don’t know why she’s doing that now. It’s how Angela, Ricky and Brian Krakow spoke in My So Called Life episodes.

The Killers worked with a gospel choir for two songs on Hot Fuss.

At times, the freelance blog work can be mundane, but it’s been a god-send in the loneliest and most depressed periods of the past year. The work kept me on a deadline and forced me to write when there were times I didn’t think I could.

Adam Ant’s mother used to clean Paul McCartney’s house.

“I mean, when my ex got engaged, he didn’t even have the balls to tell me when I ran into him. I found out from a mutual friend’s Facebook wall.” I ran into Amanda and saw the so-so engagement ring on her short, baby carrot-shaped finger. If it weren’t for the ring, I doubt she would’ve told me either.

The Strokes made their debut at The Spiral in New York City.

“I mean, you two dated for so long that marriage had to come-up a few times, right?” I decide that the, “I means,” are something Melissa probably does when she’s nervous. She’s afraid of what my answers might be. We’ve been together only a short time now, so the nervous speech pattern is a new discovery for me. And the question makes me realize that she didn’t read the entry below even though she said she did.

The Ting Tings took their name from Katie White’s Chinese co-worker.

“HEY! Are you going to answer even one of my questions?” I figured she would just think that I fell asleep. I guess the rapid tapping of my HP keyboard is louder than I thought.

Jack Johnson formed Brushfire Records in 2002.

“It feels like when an NCAA basketball team makes a decent and unexpected run to the Sweet 16 in March. But the following year, an NCAA investigation reveals that the team violated multiple NCAA rules. As part of the team’s punishment, the previous season’s achievement is wiped from the record books as if it never happened. The team still remembers its accomplishment, but it’s now insignificant.” Melissa sits next to me on the IKEA.

Inspiral Carpet’s first album was Planecrash, released in 1988.

“That’s how I feel about her engagement. That it erases a period of my past that I still remember, but it’s insignificant now. It doesn’t matter.”

Sleigh Bells’ Derek Miller was a founding member of Florida metalcore band Poison the Well.

Pictured here are my journals – 13 journals in all. The first entry is 1/8/97 and continues to the present. Jim Carroll’s The Basketball Diaries started me on my journaling path while I was living in Cambridge, England in the summer of 1997.

I bought the skull and bones journal pictured here on ebay. It has that thick parchment paper and a real leather cover. Even though it’s unlined, I managed to keep the writing from being too slanted. Here is a random entry that I typed out for easier reading.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Stuck in this fuckin’ rut!! Feel like there’s no way out except for suicide. I have been thinking about suicide a lot lately. Not like this since I was at that shitty Roseville job. Killing myself would be such an escape from the ever-present disappointment, self-hatred, hopelessness and fear that my daily life has become. Pointless. Why try living anymore?

I’ve got to do something. Send out more resumes. Fish for opportunities. I’m not living anymore. I stopped progressing about five years ago. I’m on the way down now.

I’ll never marry Amanda, so I don’t know what I’m doing. Another thing that has stalled. But my entire life has stopped. I feel like I’m dead now anyway. Why not just make it formal? What my life is now is not living. People progress – I stall. Nowhere. Hate me!!

Embarrassed of every aspect of my life. Home, car, job, relationship, money. I HAVE NOTHING!! Nothing to live for.

Mistakes and bad choices have ruined me. Fucked me forever!!

When are you going to buy a house? NEVER!!

I am so fuckin’ scared!! This will never get better. In this apt. forever. I’ll never get a real job and make real money. Panic sets in all the time. I shouldn’t want to kill myself, but I think about it – serious thoughts.

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Commentary – Looking back at this, I would like to say it was just melodrama. In reality, it was someone kept down by a constant cloud of depression. It was a common thread through so many journal entries of mine at the time. It was a person thinking that microwave popcorn dinners and having to choose between trash bags and toilet paper at Target was his fate (toilet paper always, always won). I would grab a handful of those little white plastic bags at the checkout and use those as trash bags. It required having to carry little loads of garbage to the alley multiple times daily.

At the time, I was working some random contract position that some random staffing agency got me. It may have been Thomson Reuters…in fact it was. I was working at TR when I met Amanda (see third paragraph of entry). We had been dating for about six weeks at the time of this entry, and not even constant female companionship and morning sex before work could get me out from under that black cloud of negativity.

I was still driving my rusty 1995 Mitsubishi with the long crack in the windshield. That crack made the windows frost on the inside too when it got cold. I’d have to use the ice scraper on the inside and end up with ice shavings all over my dashboard. Note that even though Amanda was my girlfriend, I wrote that I’m embarrassed of my relationship.

I was living in a tiny, old apartment in Uptown at the time. Amanda hated it. She always had to circle the block multiple times to find a parking spot and would enter my apartment in a shitty mood because of it. I eventually got out of that apartment and bought my house.

I could hear my heartbeat and opened the inbox, fully expecting Jeanine’s reply to my Worst Email Ever. It wasn’t from Jeanine, it was from Melissa_xxxxx@gmail.com. For whatever reason, Melissa replied directly to me, fully passing over the middle-man…er, middle-sister.  I could not believe the break in protocol here.  It was unprecedented to say the least. This chick is ballsy.

I gathered myself and double-clicked:

Hi, I’m not much of a cook, but want to come to my house this Friday for dinner? We can watch that football show that’s filmed in your hometown.

Call me.  Mel.

“That football show” she’s talking about is Friday Night Lights, shot in Austin. And I was f’ing ecstatic. Amanda never invited me over for dinner because she had roommates. Melissa owns her own house. And so my Worst Email Ever was instantly elevated to a literary classic in my own mind.  Prozac Nation, Fargo Rock City, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and Worst Email Ever.

I tried to re-focus on my work for the remaining four hours, but I realized I’m in the grips of a relationship beginning. We’ve acknowledged the chemistry, and we’re trying to make it manifest into something tangible and solid. I want to fast-forward to the stage where we’re lying on the couch on a Saturday night in comfortable clothes and thick socks. And when I’m invited to a party, instead of the host asking, “Is Kilby coming?” the host instead asks, “Are Kilby and Melissa coming?”

I leaned back in my chair and realized the once ever-present thought of Amanda is no longer with me. I wore braces for two years from 8^th to 10^th grade. The metal became part of me because I saw it every day when I looked in the mirror and felt it on the inside of my lips. It was unpleasant, but I learned to live with it. It was just always there. The day the dentist twisted them from my mouth for good, my head instantly felt lighter. I rushed to a mirror and I looked better. I began smiling more and my young life got easier.

The braces are gone from my life and now Amanda is too. I don’t miss either.

I expected her to give me one of those European-kiss-kiss-on-each-cheek greetings, but she grabbed my hand and smiled “Hey, Kilby. Great to see you again.”  The levity of talking on the patio at Jeanine’s party had been replaced by the formality of a first date. But she was the best dressed first date I had ever met, and her fashion sense made me slightly nervous.  I’ve known these types of girls before.  They have the mastheads of Elle, Vogue and Vanity Fair committed to memory.

The four-person table was set for two, with her plate directly across from mine.  When she sat down, she moved her plate so that she would be seated immediately to my left.  I liked her, so I mirrored her body language and hoped she would notice.  She rested her arm on the table, I did too.  She put her hand on her knee, I put my hand on my knee. We both went to Catholic schools, no longer go to church, but desire to be married in a Catholic ceremony.  And neither of us thinks that is strange.  After a three-hour dinner, I walked her to her car and said I wasn’t going to hug her, because I suck at hugging – even beautiful women.  She hugged me anyway and I tensed up like I always do mid-hug. Walking back to my car, the hug made me smell like her perfume, and the aroma was sweeter than Amanda’s perfume ever was.

I’ve been crushing on girls long enough in the electronic age to know that when you email a friend or sister of your crush, that it’s immediately forwarded to the object of your affection.  With this in mind, I carefully drafted an email to Jeanine the next morning.  It had to be witty, to the point, confident and show just the right amount of interest without sounding over-eager.  What kind of email would Steve McQueen send?  I wondered. Hah, I got it.  I pictured McQueen sitting at the bar with his Power Book – shot of bourbon to the left, cigarette to the right.  His ever-present squint focused squarely on the keypad.

Hey Jeanine, had a great time with your sis last night.  She’s funny, intelligent, Catholic, and no ex-husband or kids…everything I look for : )

[SEND]

I know. I know.  It is quite possibly, no…unequivocally, the single worst piece of communication ever sent by anyone in the history of the entire world.  And that includes snail mail, telegraph, fax, sign language, Morse code, carrier pigeon and telepathy.  My keyboard should be ashamed of me, and in fact, I’m pretty sure that it is.  My pathetic attempt at romance humor came off sounding like an even more pathetic checklist.  And what would ever possess me to think that McQueen would end it with a smiley face emoticon?

I sent it to Jeanine’s work address, so I knew her Outlook ping went off immediately after I sent it.  And I knew enough about Jeanine’s job to know that she rarely has to attend meetings, eats lunch at her desk and we have a history of responding to each other’s emails within half an hour.  Nonetheless, time began to crawl.  Even though my Outlook ping hasn’t sounded, I checked the inbox just in case.

What if Outlook chooses today to NOT ping?  What if my computer speakers short out and I don’t hear the ping?  I checked again.  Nothing.  I went to lunch with a co-worker and deliberately took my time. I returned one hour and five minutes later, and no envelope icon in the lower right corner.  I opened the inbox anyway.  Nothing.

God speed, brothers. God speed.