Once a Cheater...?
This is not a cheating spouse story but a story about a jerk who dogged me back in college. I thought I would submit it anyway because it's something that I'll never forget, even though it was a long time ago.
I was 19 and in love... my first real relationship. We were goofy together, we had lots to say to each other all the time, and the attraction was strong. He turned me on to good music and the joy of sex, which I knew nothing about having arrived at college a nice, Catholic school girl with my virginity in tact. I had never experienced anything like this and was head over heels. I remember my dad asking, "Do you think you'll marry him?" I guess he was as naive as I was.
I should have noticed the signs, but again, this was my first 'real' boyfriend and they say love is blind, so, you know. Christmas break arrived, and I spent some of it at his parents' house and attending various festive soirees with him. At one of these, a friend of mine from the dorm was boozing hard and I guess you could say flirting with him, sort of advertising her skills. Maybe a tiny part of me knew she was sweet on my man but again, I was oblivious. I thought she was just doing her flirty thing that she did with all the boys.
Halfway through the holiday break, he went back to school early to take a class during the "winter session". I remember him calling me from the pay phone of the guys' dorm, telling me what a ghost town it was and how he couldn't wait for "real" school to start so he could be with all his friends again. I remember also that he mentioned She was there too, that they had struck up a little friendship since no one else was around and there was nothing to do. They studied together, he said. They were studing together.
Studying.
Again, I fail to recognize what was plain as the nose on my face. Now we're back at school, all decked out at the Valentine's Dance. She's opted to show up stag, and is kind of lurking around the general area where he and I are dancing. I remember the song "Get right back to where we started from" had come on, and suddenly the two of them are dancing together and they kind of look a little like a couple. I shrugged it off as I thought this was just him being social.
One fateful afternoon in his dorm room, I came across some long, red hairs on and around his pillow. I went home and thought about that very hard. Then I met up with him in the hall and told him I had a dream that he had cheated on me with Dorm Mate X. I figured his face would give it away if he had -- and it did. In sober daylight, I took the wimpy and nonconfrontational approach. "Well... maybe we can all still be friends!" (idiot). At night, after many beers, I was banging on the door of his room, screaming to them and the rest of the world about what a fucking whore she was.
The rest of that year was a tearful blur. For a long time, I'd go back to the dorm, smell that musty smell in the stairwell, and the memories of him, and the memories of my sadness, would come flooding back.
Many moons later (maybe years? they actually ended up going out for quite a long time, which was some consolation), she came up to me in a crowded bar and announced that she was really sorry for what she had done to me -- and that I had handled it with class and dignity (I guess she forgot/forgave the "fucking whore" remark). I heard from someone else that he cheated on her as well, and that she punched him in the face and broke his nose.
I don't know if that's true, but it was really his infidelity, not hers. She was a girl from the dorm who I was casually friendly with. He was supposed to be my boyfriend.
I often wonder if he went on with his cavalier antics, leaving a trail of brokenhearted women, eventually graduating to Cheating Husband/home wrecker status. I often wonder what possesses people to carry on with two different partners at the same time. You can't have just one, like us honest people? You can't handle the idea of being alone? I just don't get it.
Good riddance to him, anyway.
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