We were brothers, Dale and me, but not by birth. And we didn't grow up next door to each other either. We were brothers by circumstance, by shared experience. Well, by shared agony if we're going to be honest.
We met at a Tuesday night meeting. It was my second, the first with this group. He was the second person to speak.
"I'm Dale, and I'm an alcoholic."
"Hello, Dale." Uneven enthusiasm.
"I've been sober for ten weeks." Respectful applause.
"My wife left me for another man a few months ago. She was a raging bitch for about a year before that though, and I started drinking more just to deal with all that shit. And then the wheels came off when she left. I didn't see any reason not to drink. Drinking made me numb. Until I lost my job and my boss did me the kindness of telling me that I was a fuck-up, and I was giving her too much power. She was a cast-iron bitch to be sure, but I didn't have to let her get to me like that. It took me a while, but I finally found a way to crawl out of the bottle. And I'm taking it one day at a time since. Thank you."
He sat down and rubbed his chin, which was halfway between clean-shaven and bearded. His eyes were red but not blurry, and they had a haunted look about them. Skittish. Like he was watching from where the next blow would come. Ready to dodge and run. Anything to keep from taking another full-on baseball-bat-to-the-solar-plexus kinda shot.
He looked just like me. And for the same reason.
I walked over to him when the meeting ended. He was talking with another guy, and they shook hands, grimly, just as I approached. I put out my hand.
"Name's Teddy. Your story is awful familiar."
Dale took my hand and pressed it with some power. I responded in kind. We looked in each other's eyes, nodding slightly. No intimidation, just honoring the men who taught us how to shake hands.
"Sorry to hear that."
We decided to get some real coffee instead of the weak shit they served at the meeting. When you don't drink there isn't much to do at night but to get coffee. Saved us both from going home and staring at the walls though, so it was cool.
"Latte? Really?"
"Sue me," Dale said. "I like it."
Denny's was mostly empty, so we had plenty of privacy.
"My wife left me too."
"What bullshit did she give you?"
I shrugged. "Not much. Just a note. Didn't want to talk to her after that anyway. Said she found someone who made her 'feel valued.' Whatever that means."
"That's a chickenshit move. My Charlene at least told me to my face. Seemed awful happy about it though. She had a mean streak at the end there, at least as far as I was concerned."
"Why did she go?"
"Said she found someone who loved her enough to put her first. Like I wasn't busting my ass for her all those years."
"How long were you married?"
"Eight years. And counting, I guess. Still got a month or two before it's official."
"Kids?"
"No, thank God. You?"
"No. Grace and I talked about it last year, but then we didn't do it. Good thing, I guess."
"Fucking whores."
I raised my coffee cup. "I'll drink to that."
Dale laughed. At least I think so. It was a sharp bark, short, maybe a little angry. Maybe more than a little.
"Fucking whore."
He might need a broader vocabulary. We sipped quietly for a couple moments.
"Does it get any easier?"
Dale shrugged. "Not really. She's a fucking whore who tore out my heart and tossed me away, and I still think about her. Hoping she'll come back. Then hoping she won't ever darken my door again. It's all fucked up."
"Yeah." I took another sip. The coffee was hot, endless, and bitter. Like the mood, I suppose.
"Done the paperwork?" he asked.
"Yeah. Well, she did. Guess she wanted to be unencumbered for her new man."
"Did she get your stuff?"
"Nah. Didn't have much, and she wanted fast more than anything. You?"
"Split it down the middle. Took a while before we could be civil enough to do that though."
We sat silently again.
"Baseball fan?" he finally asked.
"Yeah. Twins, sadly."
"Me too. Got tickets for Saturday. Interested?"
"Sure."
The Twins won for a change, and when he wasn't talking about his soon-to-be ex-wife, Dale was a funny guy. His screeds on his marriage could be amusing too, I suppose, but they hit too close to home for me.
Turns out we both ice-fished. We liked country music too, maybe because we were each living a sad country song. A few nights after the game we were drinking Diet Pepsi in a tavern with a pretty decent hard-driving roadhouse-blues band. It wasn't the season for ice-fishing, but the next weekend he invited me along for a fishing trip with a couple of his other buddies who had a boat. Diet Rite cola doesn't taste as good as beer when you're up on the lake, but then you don't get the hangover, so maybe it's a fair trade.
Grace had fucked me up, and whenever I was alone I would obsess over her exit from my life. That didn't stop when I met Dale, but I spent much less time alone, so I just didn't think about her as much as before. Dale adopted me it seemed, and I sure needed someone else to give a shit about my life. He was a de facto big brother. He organized outings, and he had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances and coworkers who liked to do things with him. He was an interesting guy, sure of what he wanted and committed in his actions. I don't think he ever second-guessed himself. But there was one thing we all knew: Dale's ex Charlene had carved him up, and when he got the bit in his mouth on that topic he really went to town.
"If she wanted some flashy asshole with a Mercedes then why did she marry me? Fucking whore is what she was in the end. Throw me over for some richer guy. Gold-digging bitch. Nothing good enough for her."
I'd learned early to hold my tongue when he started in on Charlene, and so did everyone else. Conversation about her riled him up, so being quiet sometimes kept the rant short. Usually not though. He had crafted an impressive monologue through sheer repetition.
"You think I ignored her? Left her lonely at night?" We'd stopped asking questions, so Dale himself took up the slack. "Hell, no! I quit my bowling leagues when I got engaged to her. Never did an overnight for fishing. No more than one game in a month, and half the time I asked her to come too. At first she would, then she stopped. Never said why.
"Did I drink too much? Not then. One beer after work was my limit. Maybe a couple if a good game was on. And I was always home in time to do some chores before dinner so we could watch TV after.
"And I took care of her in the bedroom too. She had no complaints. She wasn't a screamer, but she seemed to like getting between the sheets with me. At first we'd do it four or five times a week, then a little less, and by the end it was once a week, maybe twice if my birthday didn't fall on a Saturday."
He'd been completely devoted to Charlene, but for whatever reason she stopped loving him. One of the guys from his high school once asked him how long she'd been fucking around on him. Dale answered in the saddest voice possible.
"No clue. I never let her tell me. Stopped talking to her and stopped listening as soon as she said she wanted a divorce. Never saw her without lawyers again."
I knew exactly how he felt, but after a while I got restless listening to him. I really liked the guy, and having lived my version of his life I felt bad for him, plus I owed him for embracing my sorry ass when no one else did. But Charlene wasn't coming back, and at some point you gotta just say fuck it and move on. Easier said than done, of course, but he was lean with just a little belly, he had all his hair and his teeth, and he had a good job. Lots of women would be happy to have him, but he insisted on picking at the scab so his wound always ran red.
Maybe I was doing the same. I didn't think so, since I hated thinking about Grace. But I couldn't stop thinking about Grace, and when I did it was all black.
It's the rejection, I guess, that gutted me. She was perfect. No supermodel for me, Grace had meat on her bones. She was lively and laughed all the time, often at me. She was smart, and when she lost her temper I learned to lay low until she worked through it. She never read anything, but she'd listen to podcasts all the day long if she could, so she knew a lot of shit about everything.
I loved her. I'd think about her at work and smile. I couldn't wait to get home to her. And when she said she loved me, well, there's no better feeling in the world than reciprocated love. I couldn't understand how the woman who picked me above all others could turn around and choose someone else. Especially after she said she loved me. I thought that made me better than anyone else, at least for her. How does it happen that you fall out of love? After three years? I couldn't have changed that much. I completely understood how Dale felt about Charlene -- I lived for Grace, and she just set me aside.
If the rejection after acceptance confused me, the betrayal enraged me. My father always said finish one thing before starting another. Good advice. Grace never got it, or at least she didn't heed it. That she could do something so cruel to someone she claimed to love, well, that pretty much told me that she didn't really love me, and that hurt like a motherfucker. And it really pissed me off that she defiled our home with her betrayal. That was our place together, the sanctuary that represented our marriage, our shared retreat from the big indifferent world. And she brought someone else into it.
Fucking whore.
Shit. Maybe I was on the road to Dale-ville after all.
Until I hit a detour.
I first saw her at a barbecue that one of Dale's friends hosted. Dale was the unquestioned ringleader of our band of fellas, but he had one unbreakable rule: guys only. No women welcome. Ever. But not every dude was as woman-intolerant as Dale, so Cal invited us all over to his place on a Saturday. He had the beer and enough potato salad to feed us all for the rest of the month, but we had to bring our own meat to grill and a dish to pass and whatever we wanted to drink that wasn't Molson. Dale didn't show up of course, but most everyone else did, some even with dates. Between Cal and his girlfriend Sammi they'd invited about three dozen people, so it was a pretty good crowd.
I'd healed some since I met Dale, but Grace trashed my confidence along with the rest of the pain she wrought, so I was content to just sit in my camp chair and stare at women. I wasn't blatant about it, but no way was I going to actually talk to them. I mean, if you're an average guy, maybe carrying an extra ten pounds, decently coordinated but never a starter on your high-school sports teams, and LeBron James shows up on the playground, well, you'd be a moron to call him out, right?
So I sat with my Diet Dr. Pepper and watched the women until one of them would glance at me. Then I'd look away. The problem is that I only have two eyes and they work together, so I never saw her coming in from the side.
"Ain't you the shy one," a soft but certain voice said to my right. She had a bit of a southern accent. I've never been smooth, but that voice so unnerved me that I dropped my can of pop, and it splashed over my feet and flip-flops. The soft voice started laughing, but it wasn't mean, just amused. Then she put a tiny hand on my arm, squeezed firmly and said, "Sorry -- I didn't mean to startle you."
She was a skinny little thing, and if she cleared five feet tall it was only by the thick blonde hair on her head. Her eyes were enormous, her tits were small, and my own ass was way bigger and rounder than hers. But her face was pretty, and those gleaming white teeth in those two perfect rows, well, they blinded me, and I just felt all warm. Her bare feet were just as dainty as her hands, and while they were beautiful they were also functional, with a hint of callous on her soles. There was no polish on any of her nails, and her only jewelry was a pair of gold posts in each ear and a single thin gold chain around her neck holding a small pendant.
