The Truth Will Set You Free...
HIS SHOES WERE WHAT HE CALLED financial aid shoes in college. So worn and threadbare they barely qualified as shoes.
He'd been walking, sometimes running, once in a while skipping or dancing, along this road for just over fifty-six years. For most of that time, he'd walked with companions and lovers but today he was once again traveling solo.
He knew what was coming up ahead. As a result of the knowing he found himself walking in slow, befuddled circles, unwilling to move forward for just a bit. He knew better than to sit down because that inevitably led to stasis and decay. He walked in circles.
Here it comes, kid. For some time upcoming, you'll pass those places and moments when things were shiny and wonderful but the patina of betrayal will be right there to make each one bittersweet. Sonofabitch, I hate this part.
He stopped for a second. Looked ahead and sighed the sigh of a man past his prime but not so old that the walking ached his joints and lower back. He pulled his hat low on his head and started motorvating.
One foot in front of the other. Jesus. This is harder than all of those other upheavals combined. The second one slept with my friend for a year and it didn't feel like this.
He could see it coming up on his left. Like a life-sized diorama built from dust and light, a tiny apartment in Paris. Servant's quarters, really. An Air BnB he had rented for her as a first wedding anniversary present—a month in France. She went alone for the first three weeks. He joined for the fourth. They had not spent any time really apart up to that point and both cried on the first FaceTime call, he in Chicago and she a quarter mile from the Eiffel Tower.
He saw her standing in a black cocktail dress, posing for a picture. He saw himself walking through a museum exhibit devoted to the artwork of Toulouse-Letrec and the history of French prostitution and pornography. Bites of cheese and tiny bottles of cheap red wine on on the banks of the Seine. A picnic in a park the two of them had traveled miles to find.
He stopped and stared for a beat. As he felt the tears pull his face into a grimace, he reached up and smacked himself, turned away, and kept walking.
Why is this so much harder? I mean, aside from the extreme situation, the wild ride of improbable circumstances, why does this feel like suffering rather than relief?
He thought about Paris as he passed and the model evaporated like vapor. It had been his grand plan and he had saved money and made arrangements for her to experience a piece of the world she had only dreamed of prior. Like all grand plans, there were hiccups but, on the whole, it was a landmark in their marriage.
On his right, coming up around the corner so fast it made his knee give way a bit, was another diorama.
There she was, on the stage of a music festival in downstate Illinois. She was both drumming and singing. She was fantastic. He had rarely been on the "I'm with her" side of things, not known strictly as himself but as her husband and it was thrilling.
He stood in the mid-day heat among a crowd of appreciative festival-goers, drinking a flat Budweiser, and taking pictures of her (and her band) on his phone. She was amazing to behold and he soaked in the moment.
Later, after the set, he was suddenly employed as an unofficial roadie, helping carry the instrument cases back to the crappy van they traveled in, showing her in his way how supportive he was. How proud to be hers.
And then immediately on his left—
The chef who prepared their delicious Italian meal was also an opera singer. She was standing in the restaurant belting out an aria from Riggoletto (he thought it was La donna è mobile) while the two drank wine (her) and beer (him).
They were in Cancun on a beach vacation. It was their 'one good meal' as he liked to say because her preference was to find the diviest places and nibble from the generally limited bar menu. He insisted that they go to at least one decent restaurant. She had chosen this one and it was a knockout.
The trip had had its ups and downs but this moment—this one—was the one he most cherished. She was beautiful. The food was incredible. The opera singing chef was a surprise and capped the evening as both wonderful and romantic.
At least romantic for me. Her version of romance typically came from a bodice-ripping pulp novel—all steamy lust and sex—his was this. It was a disconnect between us but at this point in time, the stars and the pasta aligned.
He knew that in all relationships, there is good and bad. As he walked through this gauntlet of memories, he recalled what he told her during the first stage of confession, the decision to split, and the far more explosive confession of a night later. That these had been the best seven and a half years of marriage he had experienced. She wept in maybe a sense of gratitude, of the feeling that it hadn't been a waste of the time, that things had been mostly good.
He made a joke at one point—following the full picture napalming of the marriage—that even the best meal, when followed by a dessert platter filled with nothing but huge piles of shit, is found to be an awful experience. He wondered if that was true. Does the narrative of a marriage flip from success to failure based entirely on the unfortunate end?
The second ex-wife may have abandoned the marriage for the bed of another man but, as I walked this same nostalgia tour of highs and lows, I concluded that it had not been a waste of my ten years of life. She and I were imperfect as a couple but dynamic as partners. We created theater together. Theater, like relationships, can end up being impermanent yet the creation of so many shows with so many people affected is at least notable.
Years ago and in a more innocent, less weaponized version of social media, there was the blue dress/gold dress illusion. Half of those online saw a blue dress. The other half saw a gold dress. For its moment, it was all anyone could talk about. On a deeper level, the mini-controversy opened up those post-modernist questions about reality and how perception of the individual trumps any attempt at objectivity.
He thought that the nearly eight years of their coupling was that dress. He saw it as blue; she saw it as gold. Such is the case with all such things.
What did she and I accomplish together?
As the various dioramas popped up he tried to see the gold dress as best he could.
His fiftieth birthday party that she had organized for him.
The seventh wedding anniversary where she took him to the oldest steak house in Las Vegas.
Hours of conversations about books and culture as she worked as the off-the-books manager of a used bookstore.
The places they traveled together—
London, Edinburgh, Jamaica, St. Thomas, Cancun, New Orleans, and, of course, Paris.
The short distance travels he called 'team retreats'—
Tiny towns in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Utah, California.
The grand weekend in a COVID-shutdown Reno.
It seemed to him that the answer to the question was that they vacationed. Not as much as he thought she would've preferred but plenty enough for him.
It's difficult to view the time as little more than her using me as an opportunity to experience the world on her terms. I was happy to play along. While the union hadn't been particularly productive—we hadn't created much—it was fun.
He read once (or maybe saw it in a movie) that in a relationship, the one who cares less has the power. Power was always important to her. Control of her surroundings, of the people around her, of him. Given the circumstances, it seemed to him that she cared less about the longevity of things than he did which fit the idea. Nothing wrong with emphasizing a power dynamic but in a relationship promised to be based on mutual interest, mutual trust, and mutual respect, the disconnect was fatal.
He kept moving forward. He knew what was coming, wasn't looking forward to it. As David Foster Wallace wrote "The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."
✶
AFTER WHAT SEEMED LIKE HUNDREDS OF MILES WALKING DOWN THE ROAD AND NEARLY EIGHT YEARS OF MEMORIES, HE SAW IT. This was the thing he dreaded. He'd been through this every time he'd failed in a big way. He didn't really know what it was called but he called it The Tunnel of Regret and Recrimination.
It didn't look like a long tunnel—it never did. He'd been through it for both of his divorces and it hurt each time. Both of those experiences left him scarred and filled with self doubt. It was a horror show of mirrors, of voices, of things said and done that ultimately led to his current moment.
He stopped just short of the tunnel's gaping entrance.
Christ. This is gonna be rough.
He took a long breath, held it for a few seconds, let it out, and stepped in.
"If you'd just grabbed me and said 'I can fuck you better than him' and thrown me down and fucked me, we wouldn't be here!"
A scene of her bringing two random strangers home for drinks who were obviously there for a threesome and he looking past it and shrugging as if it weren't a sign of things to come.
"I wouldn't change anything about you."
"You don't want the whole truth. It would hurt you too much."
"I might have a Craigslist gig where I bring this guy home and tie him up and leave him there for a few hours."
"That's not how an open relationship works—you don't fuck around for two years, get caught, and then suggest it."
He saw himself sitting in the airport with his friend, wondering where she'd gone after being unreasonably furious at the hickie he'd given her the night before. Later, on the plane, sitting in misery, he looked at her and asked "Are we still getting married?"
"I was riding my bike and a guy pulled up and offered me $15.00 for a blowjob. I laughed and told him he'd have to come up with a lot more than that!"
A bizarre montage of him accepting and ignoring her demands for attention followed by her open disgust of his affection.
"Oh, yeah. She's a cat. When she wants affection, she gets right up in your face, when she doesn't she'll swat at you with her claws. I can never tell which cat she'll be on any given day."
A moment when she took a Christmas present from his mother and left it in an alley just around the corner from their apartment and he simply not saying anything.
"God, you're such a blowhard. You talk SO much!"
He watched as she frequently said horrible things about him—his weight, his teeth, his hair, his clothing, the food he ate—and instead of standing up for himself simply complaining like a child whose feelings were hurt.
He also saw himself quietly judging her choices. Her pornographic view of sexual relations. Her absolute refusal to get a job. Her focus on Craigslist as a source of random income. Her strangely distant relationship with her mother and maternal relationship with her father. Her lack of ambition to do more than skate over the surface of life. Her daily dumpster-diving. Her hedonism. Her low-grade misandry. Her petulant reaction to rules.
He felt disdain from her. She likely felt the same from him. The stage had been set and the inevitable conclusion reached.
"It takes two to tango."
✶
HE STUMBLED OUT OF THE FAR END OF THE TUNNEL AND FELL TO HIS KNEES. He felt despair like he never had. He let loose and wept.
He knew that his deep sadness was as much his doing as hers. He knew in a way that was a devastation that he had all the information the entire time but had convinced himself that the power of simply acquiescing and believing in the fairy tale of their story, things would certainly turn out better than this.
He had forgotten that fairy tales—at the least the versions before Disney got a hold of them—were cautionary tales designed to scare the shit out of children. Warnings against the dangers of complacency and carelessness.
He had seen the warnings and actively chose to not only ignore them and her but reframe them into a strange roadmap of the acceptable. He was madly in love with a version of her that didn't really exist. He saw past her and invented someone. At least she'd been honest enough to actually see him and know she wasn't in love with his real self.
So many of his family and friends were quick to tell him that none of this was his fault as if fault is the end-all-be-all anyone should be seeking. She acted with no malice just thoughtless disrespect in the end. He was no more to blame than a man who heard the warnings of a natural disaster but ignored them. This was no one's fault.
I have to own my dumbassery to learn from it. The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.
He got up from his knees. He wiped the tears and snot from his face. He took another breath and began walking again.
He approached a fork in the road. No markings. He could go right or left but once the choice was made, he was destined to walk that path. No do-overs.
To the left was a section of the Road identical in its way to the section he'd traveled before he'd met her. To the right was a similar road but far in the distance was the silhouette of a woman.
He shrugged. He smiled a smile acknowledging what a moron he had been and would be again. He turned to the right and started walking again.
