The Demise of My First marriage
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 12:54 pm
Time has healed most of the wound and I was writing this to a friend, so I guess I share it with you guys.
It's a pretty nasty story....Right after we were married, I went to Oklahoma to get everything ready while the Air Force moved our stuff. Laura stayed behind to oversee the packing and the movers. She was supposed to join me soon after. Well, the stuff got there, but no Laura. I called her and she kept giving me the runaround for weeks, saying she was "wrapping up loose ends". Yeah right, she was wrapping her end around another guy.
Meanwhile I was swamped with responsibility and intense training in the Air Force. The soonest I could get off was a month later. I got a weekend leave and traveled home that weekend. i got into town about 2 AM.
Not wanting to scare her, I called our apartment from across the street on a payphone. And.....a guy answered! I felt my heart drop right out my socks. I asked, "Is Laura there?" already seething and beginning to feel disconnected. She came on the line immediately and now I knew for a fact that they were in bed together. The phone was right by the bed. ( I felt like that old Pink Floyd song..you know, "are we reaching...click! I'm sorry sir, they keep hanging up and there's a man answering.")
I told her, 'I'm coming over right now!" She said, "No don't! let's talk in the morning!" I replied heatedly, " I just traveled over a thousand miles to see my wife, I'll be damned if i'm waiting till morning!"
So I went over. Laura came down the stairs with a sad and shameful expression. She tearfully told me that she couldn't bear to be separated from her parents again (despite the fact that we had lived in Las Cruces for the previous two years together) and that while she had been here alone, she had run into her old high school boyfriend. (as if somehow, it was all my fault for leaving her alone for a while.)
About that time the interloper came sauntering down the stairs, saying, 'Well, I wasn't going to get involved, but I may have to" as if he was in charge or something.
Now..I was in my flight suit. It comes equipped with a military switchblade for cutting parachute lines. In a twinkling, I had it out and was holding it to his throat. With the adrenaline coursing through my veins, combined with the hatred in my heart, he felt like a little child. I could probably have broken his neck with my bare hands. I was very, very close to being out of my mind. I honestly felt completely insane at that moment. I wanted to kill him so bad I could taste it. I told him in a low voice through gritted teeth, "If you don't vaporize in two seconds, I will carve you into tiny pieces and flush you down the toilet!" ...and I meant it.
He beat a hasty retreat back up the stairs.
I turned back to Laura...a red haze covered most of my vision....I knew then that I needed to leave, immediately. If the cops came now, I would most certainly lose any chance I ever had to be an Air force pilot. Attempted Aggravated Assault is not considered "conduct becoming an officer."
As I turned to go, Laura stammered some kind of lame apology...I turned back and said, "I want my ring back." She blinked a little and her lower lip quivered, but she reluctantly took it off and handed it to me.
I took it in both hands and with all my strength, I squashed the ring into an unrecognizable mess. Then I threw it at her as hard as I could and screamed, "There! Now it fits your personality instead of your finger, TWISTED!"
I left. I was so mad that I drove all the way back to Oklahoma that night.
As the weeks passed, I began to regret my behavior. had I done the right thing? Shouldn't I have given her another chance? I knew I was still in love with her.
One day, her lawyer called. He told me that she was suing for divorce, and that they wanted all my possessions and alimony. I was lost, I had no idea what to do. So I went to the base lawyer.
Air Force lawyers are a special breed, they not only have the sneakiness and intelligence of normal lawyers, they have the power of the entire government at their fingertips. He called her lawyer and told him, "Look....He's here in Oklahoma, you're in New Mexico. if we want, we can send him overseas and not only will you not know where he is, you'll be married to him forever. Here's our deal. She gets nothing, he gets it all. Her clothes, her car, everything...and no alimony, she wants to walk? Walk. She cheated on him and you should be gald we're letting you off this easy."
Well...to make a long story short, I finally signed the papers (over a year later, I refused to give up and kept asking her to come back).
The last page in this sordid story is perhaps the strangest of all. Eight years after I had left her behind, she called me out of the blue one day in Phoenix. She ws crying and told me that she was so sorry about what she had done. It was the biggest mistake of her life, she said. The guy she had gone with instead of me turned out to be a monster. he sold drugs, made her prositute herself for money to pay the bills, abused and raped her, abused her children, and even took the kids on drug buys.
After I stopped laughing, I told her, "You made your bed, now lie in it!" and hung up.
Then I picked up the phone and called the NorthWest New Mexico Drug Task Force.
It's a pretty nasty story....Right after we were married, I went to Oklahoma to get everything ready while the Air Force moved our stuff. Laura stayed behind to oversee the packing and the movers. She was supposed to join me soon after. Well, the stuff got there, but no Laura. I called her and she kept giving me the runaround for weeks, saying she was "wrapping up loose ends". Yeah right, she was wrapping her end around another guy.
Meanwhile I was swamped with responsibility and intense training in the Air Force. The soonest I could get off was a month later. I got a weekend leave and traveled home that weekend. i got into town about 2 AM.
Not wanting to scare her, I called our apartment from across the street on a payphone. And.....a guy answered! I felt my heart drop right out my socks. I asked, "Is Laura there?" already seething and beginning to feel disconnected. She came on the line immediately and now I knew for a fact that they were in bed together. The phone was right by the bed. ( I felt like that old Pink Floyd song..you know, "are we reaching...click! I'm sorry sir, they keep hanging up and there's a man answering.")
I told her, 'I'm coming over right now!" She said, "No don't! let's talk in the morning!" I replied heatedly, " I just traveled over a thousand miles to see my wife, I'll be damned if i'm waiting till morning!"
So I went over. Laura came down the stairs with a sad and shameful expression. She tearfully told me that she couldn't bear to be separated from her parents again (despite the fact that we had lived in Las Cruces for the previous two years together) and that while she had been here alone, she had run into her old high school boyfriend. (as if somehow, it was all my fault for leaving her alone for a while.)
About that time the interloper came sauntering down the stairs, saying, 'Well, I wasn't going to get involved, but I may have to" as if he was in charge or something.
Now..I was in my flight suit. It comes equipped with a military switchblade for cutting parachute lines. In a twinkling, I had it out and was holding it to his throat. With the adrenaline coursing through my veins, combined with the hatred in my heart, he felt like a little child. I could probably have broken his neck with my bare hands. I was very, very close to being out of my mind. I honestly felt completely insane at that moment. I wanted to kill him so bad I could taste it. I told him in a low voice through gritted teeth, "If you don't vaporize in two seconds, I will carve you into tiny pieces and flush you down the toilet!" ...and I meant it.
He beat a hasty retreat back up the stairs.
I turned back to Laura...a red haze covered most of my vision....I knew then that I needed to leave, immediately. If the cops came now, I would most certainly lose any chance I ever had to be an Air force pilot. Attempted Aggravated Assault is not considered "conduct becoming an officer."
As I turned to go, Laura stammered some kind of lame apology...I turned back and said, "I want my ring back." She blinked a little and her lower lip quivered, but she reluctantly took it off and handed it to me.
I took it in both hands and with all my strength, I squashed the ring into an unrecognizable mess. Then I threw it at her as hard as I could and screamed, "There! Now it fits your personality instead of your finger, TWISTED!"
I left. I was so mad that I drove all the way back to Oklahoma that night.
As the weeks passed, I began to regret my behavior. had I done the right thing? Shouldn't I have given her another chance? I knew I was still in love with her.
One day, her lawyer called. He told me that she was suing for divorce, and that they wanted all my possessions and alimony. I was lost, I had no idea what to do. So I went to the base lawyer.
Air Force lawyers are a special breed, they not only have the sneakiness and intelligence of normal lawyers, they have the power of the entire government at their fingertips. He called her lawyer and told him, "Look....He's here in Oklahoma, you're in New Mexico. if we want, we can send him overseas and not only will you not know where he is, you'll be married to him forever. Here's our deal. She gets nothing, he gets it all. Her clothes, her car, everything...and no alimony, she wants to walk? Walk. She cheated on him and you should be gald we're letting you off this easy."
Well...to make a long story short, I finally signed the papers (over a year later, I refused to give up and kept asking her to come back).
The last page in this sordid story is perhaps the strangest of all. Eight years after I had left her behind, she called me out of the blue one day in Phoenix. She ws crying and told me that she was so sorry about what she had done. It was the biggest mistake of her life, she said. The guy she had gone with instead of me turned out to be a monster. he sold drugs, made her prositute herself for money to pay the bills, abused and raped her, abused her children, and even took the kids on drug buys.
After I stopped laughing, I told her, "You made your bed, now lie in it!" and hung up.
Then I picked up the phone and called the NorthWest New Mexico Drug Task Force.
