Surreal-life and ex's - Part 1

Hi all, I've begun a new category that wasn't supposed to exactly be about this type of thing, I meant it more to be a way to record the snapshot memories of my past before they fade away (occasionally to be accompanied by actual snapshots). It's after 5am and my brain is starting to make that humming noise and I've yet to shower, but I had to at least start on this little story to get part of it out of my brain...

Long story short (for now), a week ago I went to our local post office, where Sparky and I have been going for over 10 years, we know everyone by name, they're used to us dragging in three and four shopping bags full of stuff to mail 3 to 4 times a week. Usually Sparky is nice enough to bring them in for me, but both of our businesses have been slow lately, so I've been going in more often. He goes around lunch time, I go right before they close normally, at like 4:30. Why? Because I work nights and sleep all day. And sometimes when I get up some eBay payments have arrived in the mail or by Paypal and I try and get them out the same day.

But anyway, I walk in to the post office and there are only a few people in line and several at the counter. As opposed to the often scenario of having the line to the back of the building that I often encounter, this was great, I waltzed up to take my place in line. The person in front of me was called and I'm head of the line, yippee. I glance around and notice a couple at the window in front of me delivering what are obvious eBay packages, complete with a bin to carry them in. Short woman, very tall man. Something starts to click in my brain as I'm looking at him from behind... hmmm.. cellphone and what looks like a pager, the ever present shorts, right height (about 6'4")... And then he opens his mouth to say something witty to one of the other clerks and I know. Before he even turns his head a bit to look at his wife, broken nose, strong profile...

It's my ex boyfriend, whom I haven't seen in over 10 years. I broke up with him the day after I met Sparky. He was not only my last boyfriend, but also my first REAL boyfriend whom I met on the eve of my 21st birthday as I was about to move out of my parents home into my first apartment, the first person who lived with me. This all began back in the early 80's. I was working security graveyards at a hospital and he brought a patient in to be transferred (he was an EMT) and we talked some, he flirted, but I balked. So he came to visit me at my day job at Foley's and basically was so persistant I eventually agreed to go out with him. We dated on and off for years, he'd stay with me and then sort of panic and drift back to his mom's house for awhile. He's promise to do things and then just not show up, very frustrating yet highly charged relationship because we had a hell of a spark between us that never really went away, even after I'd given up on him after he'd promised to move to Austin so we could be together and then called me in the middle of the night at work to decline. That was one of my moments of clarity.

Now in between our on and offness I didn't sit around and pine. I dated several people, mostly people I worked security with, even married one because he had the balls to ask me. Of course, it turned out I was his fourth wife and he basically just needed someone to run the house and clean up after him. That one lasted less than two years, but it alienated me from most of my friends, resulted in five different moves around Texas in said time frame, and left me in Austin all alone after it was done with two big dogs. While there I dated a few other guys I worked with, all disasters.

The ex actually tracked me down in Austn and showed up at my work (at a time when someone was trying to serve lawsuit papers on me so when I heard there was a guy with a walkie talkie at the security station I was more than a little shook up). But it was him, in full faux police regalia (more on that in the next entry), tall and handsome and full of blarney. (We're both Irish so I'm immune)

The weirdest part was a week or two before I had a dream about him so vivid I actually wrote it in my diary. I was working nights (even then) and during the day I dreamed that he was there, in town, looking for me, and he was really upset that he couldn't fine me. Turns out that on the day of the dream, he actually had driven up from Houston and went to my last address, a few miles down the street from where I'd moved to. He'd run and address check on me and came up with the old address.

By this point I was officially divorced, and sort of dating/living with a guy I met at work (in my house, as always), and my brother, who had followed me and the ex husband to New Braunfels and then Austin to help with our failed business. It was a way wrong relationship, but I hadn't figured out how to get out of it without him getting all suicidal and depressed so he and his dog remained for a little while longer.

I was also feeling rather suicidal and depressed living away from my family, with few friends, and a boyfriend who would come and visit when he felt like it (or I'd drive into Houston to visit for a day). So in January of 1990 with my parents help, I moved back to Houston and settled into a nice little rental house with my two dogs. And here comes ex boyfriend drifting back. I had mentally blown him off when he backed out of coming to Austin, so it was easier to resist his charms this time, though we did go out a few times, etc., etc.

Then a few months after I'd moved back to Houston, I got an invitation to a Dark Shadows fan club party that I'd joined when I was in Austin and I thought, what the heck. Fan people usually sort of scare me, and there were several scary ones at the party, but there was also this tall good looking young man who I instantly felt at ease with. I think we were probably the only two "normal" people there (no offense guys and gals). And he was funny, and engaging, and asked me to go to a midnight movie after the party, which turned out to be near my house. This was all odd for me, because I rarely date anyone I haven't known in some capacity for awhile, but something clicked.

So I get to the theater (late as usual) and he's waiting on the steps out front for me and I run through the parking lot and we joke and go in and watch a terrible movie (The Guardian), which, I'm told, I babbled nonstop throughout. (I do that when I'm nervous). He was working the next day, on which I had a date scheduled with the ex, and asked to see me the day after and we've literally been together since. We give the day we met as our anniversary, and seven years later we got "officially" married on the same date.

So I called the ex, left a message on his machine ala Tim Burton, and basically told him I didn't think it was working between us, and I wasn't happy. And I didn't see him again till a few years later when he showed up on my porch one day looking for my brother in a big shiny truck. Sparky saw him though the window, but I don't think they ever officially met. Soon after I heard from my brother that he had met and married a nurse. So much for an inability to make a commitment.

Yikes, almost six, off to bed, more tomorrow...

Posted by Morticia at September 24, 2003 05:44 AM | TrackBack