Happy Anniversary to Me!

by lizard at 05:56 AM on July 28, 2001

Am I the only one of the Bad Samaritan bunch that isn't single? I am very, very not single. I am so not-single, i actually have a hard time *remembering* being single. I've been with Chris for ten years now, or is it 11? We aren't married, though, and when I say anniversary, I mean wedding. Sometime in the month of August, I will *not* be celebrating twenty years of being married. Wait. Make that sometime early in September. I don't really remember all that well. However, I am here to tell you it's been an amazing couple of decades. I feel I must commemorate this milestone with a story, even if the telling makes me sound like a whacko, an alcoholic, and an idiot. Which it does:

Steven and I have been married since three days after we met, on a hot summer night at a gas station at about 2AM. My friend Bernie (a girl, Bernice) and I were supposed to go to (I am not making this up) a Billy Graham event (I was going to say, concert, but that can't be it) and ended up getting drunk, drunk, drunk. And yes, I was driving. Kids, do not try this at home. So, at this gas station (I don't remember, this is one of those ‘guess what you did last night’ tales that have been gleefully regaled to me on too many mornings after.) I walked up to this total stranger and wrapped my arms around his neck and gave him a big, wet, drunken kiss. We (me, future hubby Steven, his friend Chuck, and Bernie) ended up at a park, drinking all night. Steven was magnetic, smart, funny, and absolutely, amazingly gorgeous. My daughter got his big blue eyes, lucky girl.After three more days of hectic drinking (I may have gone home, but not for long. My fiancée, Charles, was living there with me at my parent's house, and I was trying to break free. Or something.) I'm not sure what I was thinking at the time.

It was more or less done on a dare. We tried and tried to get some money out of my bank to run off to Reno and get married on the second day, but that was back when ATM deposits took two or three days to post, so we had to wait. We agreed to meet at Jack In The Box in Castro Valley at 6PM the next day, and Steven taunted me about not being serious, about not showing up. Well I showed him, I showed up. So Steven, me, Chuck, and his girlfriend Julie drove up to Reno as fast we could manage in my little Toyota, (sober, this time), got double-married, did a little gambling, and drove back. I was only a little late for work. That night, I went home and informed my parents and (now ex-fiancée) Charles that I was leaving with Steven. We then went and slept in his van, which was at that point our home. I was late to work again the next day and, due to a long-established pattern of such irresponsible behavior, was fired.

Many adventures ensued. (As it turned out, he married me thinking I had money. What I had was a low-paying, extremely tenuous clerical job, a maxed American Express card and a brand new car, and no way of paying for either. Boy what a loser! Thinking I had money, ha ha, fooled him... Oh, alright, I was a bit of a loser myself, I guess. But not as bad as him!) We were unemployed, living in his van, and neither of us found this particularly distressing. We were a resourceful young couple, I was always able to find some sort of gainful employment, and he had no conscience whatsoever and was able to generate income by doing unto others things I still shudder to remember. A true sociopath, he was also a pathological liar and at various points in our travels, believed himself to be a painting contractor, a real estate agent and then a broker, and whatever else seemed like a good idea at the time. We had a daughter. And then a son, but that's too sad to go into at this juncture. Other things happened. He was abusive in the extreme. Have I mentioned my nose is crooked? He's the reason. That's another story.

I stayed with him four and a half years, mostly because I didn't want anyone telling me ‘I told you so’. I only left him after my parents had moved away from my childhood home and had an unlisted address in Ventura; only then was it safe to run home to Mommy and Daddy. They have since moved away, but I am still in Ventura. I love Ventura, it is a pleasant refuge. Not that I still need refuge; pretty much the entire USA and especially California are off limits to Steven because of some misunderstandings about the terms of his federal parole. I haven't seen him for over fifteen wonderful years. Ahh, the memories. My husband is now living in another country and has been married for about ten years to someone else, with two kids. (We are not legally divorced, but he maintains that since it happened in another country, it doesn't count). I have certainly considering filing for a divorce, but (unlike him), I regard the presence of a valid marriage license as an excellent preventative measure, a kind of an insurance policy...just making sure this sort of thing never happens again, you understand, because I have seen all of this firsthand (or at least been told about it the next morning).