I have been in love with only two men in my lifetime and it is only now, many years latter, that I realized the one I truly loved was not the one I married. A little history is required here so I'll just give the pertinent facts as they occurred. My name is Jillian, um, Jill to my friends and co-workers. Barry Kaminski and I have been married since 1984 until his death in 2004...twenty years of wedded bliss, sprinkled with a good dose of yelling, fights and sometimes violence because our personalities were as different as night and day. Barry was a loud, boisterous and full time braggart, sometimes to my embarrassment...while I was the quiet and shy wife.
Once at a party, I was casually talking to a male acquaintance we both knew very well, when Barry, drunk as a skunk, came over and grabbed my crotch and said to our friend, "Back off buddy...her pussy is mine." I was so embarrassed that I had to leave the party and wait out in the car. On the way home, I drove and gave Barry a piece of my mind while he was passed out in the back seat. I doubt if he heard me as drunk as he was, but I felt better...much better. I may be a shy woman, but I wasn't always a timid mouse, especially when I was right and he was wrong and just being a big stupid ass hole.
Don't get the wrong idea that I'm a saint, because I'm not...no one is, but there were times when I stood nose to nose with my raging husband and never gave up an inch of my determination. I can control my temper most of the time, but when I do lose it...watch out, the dinner dishes soon will be flying. Many a time, I vowed to leave him, but I always relented when my temper cooled and I thought of our daughter. She loves her father in spite of his yelling and drinking and needs a two parent home. However, as soon as she's eighteen...I'm out of this marriage from hell.
Barry's best man at our wedding was Joe, a quiet and unassuming man...whom I always had the deepest respect for. Joe was also Barry's best friend and camping buddy and they would go off for the weekend camping at a nearby campground. I wasn't the outdoors gal and usually stayed home with our daughter, Cindy because if there are bugs around...you won't find me there. We had a camping trailer set up at Whispering Pines, one of the local campgrounds about an hours drive from our home in the city and on any given weekend, that's where you would find my Barry and his buddy, Joe...drinking and telling tall tales. However, when the three of us were together...Barry, as usual did most of the talking. He was, I must admit, a wonderful storyteller and often had me on the verge of peeing in my panties from laughing so hard. Joe, on the other hand, was like me, very quiet and just listened to Barry's usual tall tales.
My Barry, when he was drank, often got mean and violent and that was the primary reason that I never went camping with him...besides the bugs of course. Barry could be a wonderful man when he was sober...but that was wishful thinking on my part. As soon as Barry got home from work...he started drinking...and yelling...and fighting...bla bla bla. When he gets like that, I just tune him out and let him alone for the rest of the night...and forget about sex...he wasn't getting any that night.
Joe on the other hand, got talkative and funny when he had a few too many and that to me made him a more desirous person to be around because he was like me...a lovable drunk. One incident I'll never forget took place last summer concerning Joe and drinking and it still brings a smile to my face to this day, because Joe and I...were sexually intimate. It was so wonderful and probably the most erotic lovemaking I have every experienced and right under my hubby's nose. Um, let me explain...as best as I remembered it because it was a long night and all of us were drinking.
On the few occasions that I ventured into the wilds of south western Luzerne county to visit my two rugged outdoorsmen down at the camp ground...I have to admit that this one time was probably the best time I had down there in the three years we owned the trailer. Given the crazy way the evening started...I still find it hard to believe that it happened at all. It was late August...a week before labor day on a Friday night and already getting dark at eight o'clock when my daughter and I stopped at McDonalds a few miles from the campground for a late supper and we enjoyed a nice quiet leisurely meal for a change. I had to work swing hours that Friday and didn't have time to make supper, but I knew Cindy had supper at my mom's but that was three hours ago and she's probably hungry now...like I am. On alternate Fridays, I work from ten in the morning to six and then it's a forty-five minute drive home in rush hour traffic and I didn't pick up Cindy at my mother's house until quarter to seven and then drive an hour to get to the silly campground. Thank god I knew the way to the campground in the dark, but there was a full moon that came out once in a while from a partly cloudy sky. Soon we were driving up the camp ground's gravel main road to our campsite and parking behind Joe's new Jeep. No sooner than I turned off the engine, Cindy was springing out of our car and running over to her father. Barry was sitting on his pickup truck's tailgate by the campfire with Joe and Cindy gave her father a big hug. Barry smiled and returned her hug, but just looked at me and shook his head and tapped his finger on his watch and I apologized,
"I know...I know...we're late, but I had to work swing hours today...remember?" Barry gave Joe a nudge and said,
"You gotta love my workaholic wife...she makes you and me look bad." Joe gave me a sincere smile and greeted me warmly...something my hubby failed to do when we arrived. Oh well...that's married life I suppose.
The plan was simple. I would spend Friday night with Barry in the shoebox-sized master bedroom of our trailer, while Joe slept on the convertabed in the dinette area at the front of our trailer. Um, Cindy would spend the remainder of the weekend with her grand parents at their trailer just up the road...maybe three, four hundred feet away. I would go home early Saturday morning because I had to work from 8 to noon, then I would pick up Cindy sometime Sunday morning because she had soccer practice in the afternoon. I put my overnight bag and purse on the bed in the so-called bedroom of our camper and then walked my daughter up the road to Barry's parent's trailer, carrying her over night bag and box of board games.
When we got to their trailer, Gammy Kelso was standing on the front porch waiting for us. She's a peeker-outer when she's expecting someone and she was expecting us. Yes, their huge trailer had a porch and all the amenities of a small ranch house on wheels. Anyway, I said my pleasantries and explained our tardiness then told Cindy to behave herself or else...I'll box her ears. Cindy knew I was kidding but I don't think Gammy Kelso thought so. In her thinking, I was a poor excuse of a mother, but I think differently...I'm a great mother. Well, Gammy Kelso and I never really hit it off because I was obviously never good enough for her precious son. Oh well...in laws...right?
I was still wearing my work heels and walking was difficult as I slowly walked back down the hill to our campsite in the near pitch darkness when the full moon was behind the clouds or the tall pine trees that were everywhere. More than once I tripped while walking down that stupid gravel road, but when I tripped again...I fell. I was so mad...I cursed the road...the campground and my husband. I got to my feet and brushed myself off and walked to our campsite without further incident. When I got there...Barry was still sitting on the tail gate and all I got from my hubby when I showed him my skinned knees was a smirk and him saying,
"What a fuckin klutz for wearing heels." I was ready to lay into him...but why bother and I just replied,
"When you're right...you're right honey."
The campground didn't have streetlights except for the one down by the camp store and another one way down by the pool at the bottom of the hill...two measly streetlights for a sprawling twenty-acre campground. I went into the trailer and changed into more suitable clothes...shorts, tee shirt and of course sneakers and when I was done, I joined Barry and sat next to him on the pickup's tailgate and he gave me a beer. I could see that he was drunk as a skunk already, but surprising placid so I was crossing my fingers hoping we wouldn't have the usual family squabble tonight. I just wanted chill out and drink a little and unwind from my mind numbing day at work...not to mention the long drive to get here. I looked around and didn't see any signs of Joe, so I asked,
"Where's Joe...taking a piss or something?" Barry just laughed and said,
"He went for a walk down to the camp store...he was out of pipe tobacco. Geeze, you should have seen him wobbling like a drunken sailor when he left...what a pathetic site. He can't even hold his beer without spilling it." I rolled my eyes in disgust at my unfeeling husband's lackadaisical attitude towards his best friend and said,
"If Joe's that drunk...was it wise to let him walk down there in the dark in the condition he's in?" Barry leaned away from me and blew a smelly fart at me and said,
"Ahhhh hops." I rolled my eyes in disgust and said,
"Why didn't you stop him or at least go with him?"