I first met Lone_Eagle in a Yahoo chatroom late at night. Against the odds, I ran across a nice guy with whom I spent two years of quality time when it fit into his schedule. You see, there was a wife and a teenaged son and a whole bunch of family and friends who knew nothing about me. I was the escape from the reality of his miserable married life. I was part of the big fat lie that the Eagle Scout lived. There were others before and after me. Live and learn, I say.
Wifey converted to Catholicism from the Church of Christ to please him early in the marriage. Her reasoning was that they needed to raise the boy together in one faith, and the churches were very similar in their devotion to rules and regulations in the tradition of the Pharisees. Do this...don't do that. You'll burn in hell if you make a wrong turn. When we first met, he was recovering from the first affair of his twenty plus year marriage. It had been a textbook case of a control freak trying to save a damsel in distress..one more escape from life with wifey. He told me it screwed his head up big time. Seems to me that he learned how to play the game without guilt from that point on.
We had chatted online for almost two years before he dropped in for a visit. I was folding clothes, in the dead of winter, and watching TV when he knocked on the door peering in through those glasses that he can't see without. He saw me at my very worst, clad in flannel with tears running down my cheeks. What man could resist a bird in hand like that. We were both goners from the first touch, lonely and needing some TLC.
The details are sketchy in my mind now. There were a lot of four wheeler rides with brown dogs running behind us. Turkey and deer tracks. Bass fishing in the riverbed at sunset. Once he managed to steal away for an overnighter and we explored the river the next morning. He kissed me with the sun sparkling on the surface of the muddy Forked Deere. We spent a Christmas Eve together with his son the mighty duck hunter. Later on they went back south and lived the lie some more with the Mama who didn't want to know the truth that stared her in the face.
I can't remember exactly when I was past all of that. There was plenty of suffering on my part because, honestly, I loved the man in spite of his lies. He made me laugh and called every day to check on me. A sign man by trade, his shop was close to some railroad tracks. When the train whistle sounded while we were on the phone his words were "See..I'm right where I'm supposed to be." I never trusted him, really. A man who who will lie to his wife will lie to his girlfriend. A year into it he proved that with an admission of another fling. That was the beginning of the end of us.
The rest of the story is predictable and sad. The Eagle's parents are elderly and sick and have tons of money. Mom offered to bankroll a shop for him and pay all the expenses for the family if they would just move in with her. The last I heard, that was the plan. Catholic high school is expensive and so is college at UTM. I can't say I wouldn't have done the same thing, but I hope I wouldn't. Trust is fragile and hard earned but easily lost.
Maybe next time there will be a happy ending.
I hope a happy ending next time. It would have to be better, at least.
Posted by: Miss Cellania | March 10, 2006 at 10:26 PM
SOunds sweet but ultimately painful. Someday, somewhere there will be men that will actually be single and caring and deserving of the two of us. I promise
Posted by: TSB | April 30, 2006 at 08:50 AM